Surprise
by Bailey29
Summary: Love is not a victory march. It's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah. Hermione Granger thought she could settle down to the quiet life after the War, and she would have succeeded at it if Draco Malfoy hadn't turned up on her doorstep, half-dead. Our story begins with a chocolate birthday cake. Contains sexy smut. Dark themes in later chapters. EWE. Post DH.
1. Chapter 1

**AN: **Okay this is just a teaser chapter. The story has much more plot to it than it seems, I promise. There's also plenty of delicious smut in here so who needs a plot anyway, eh? eh? The next chapter is already mostly written so it will be up in a few days.

Please please review. This is the first fic I've ever posted, and I would really love feedback.

**Disclaimer**: Don't own it. Not profiting from it. Just doing it for the thrills.

Whoever you are, I love you for reading.

**Hermione's cottage**

He came to stand behind her. She gripped the edge of the counter with both hands and looked down, refusing to turn and meet his eyes. It was so irrational, this crippling disappointment over something so trivial. She didn't know who she was when it came to him. He made her feel so off-balance.

She realized what a sight she must look- completely bespattered in chocolate batter in a ratty tank and shorts. _So much for your stupid surprise._

Tears pooled in her eyes. She swiped at them furiously. _What the fuck is wrong with you?_

She suddenly realized that he hadn't said a single word to her since he'd walked in. The silence pressed on her chest heavily. "I'm sorry," she managed, "I wanted to surprise you with a birthday cake. I remembered what you told me last week and I wanted to do something special for you but- _Ahh_" She was cut off by a surge of delicious electricity across her skin as his lips brushed her neck at the sensitive spot just beneath her ear. He moved closer until her back was flush against his chest.

Tamping down on the way the hotness of his soft kisses was making her brain go fuzzy; she tried again, "the bloody thing exploded all over the kitchen. And I was just about to clean up when you came home so- _Ohh_" He was licking up the side of her neck, stopping to suck at all the spots that had chocolate on them, eliciting a series of tiny _Oh oh oh oh_s from her. He made his way to her ear and then whispered, "Don't you dare clean up," before going back to her pulse point and grazing it hard with his teeth. She gasped and angled her neck to give him better access.

His hands were on her hips, sliding under her top and splaying over her skin. He pushed her against the counter roughly, staying pressed up against her until she was imprisoned in between.

"Cleaning you up," he went on, ripping her tank off her in one motion, "is _my_ job." And then his hand was in her hair, turning her face so he could claim her mouth with his.

Liquid fire shot straight through her, erasing every ounce of disappointment and leaving only desire in its wake. He seemed to have stored up every piece of information about her sensitive spots from their previous two make-out sessions and was now using it to drive her crazy.

He had her positioned so that she could do nothing but submit to his ministrations. She suspected he liked it this way. This way he was completely in control. The thought niggled in her mind but was stopped in its tracks by his tongue sliding over hers.

His hands were everywhere, on her stomach, her waist, her arms, twisting in her hair and every time they passed by her lace-covered breasts he would brush his fingers over them ever so lightly. It was infuriating. Everything else he was doing was rough enough to make her gasp repeatedly with something akin to apprehension until she reminded herself that she trusted him. The way he was attacking her lips, neck and collarbone with his mouth, the way his pelvis ground against her ass, pushing her into the counter top, it was all hard and rough and raw. But why the fuck wouldn't he take her bra off? She tried to and he pushed her hands away brusquely. "You're _my _birthday present to unwrap," he growled, his voice hoarse with the arousal that was so evident from the hardened length pressing into her from behind. She shivered slightly from the thrill of him laying claim to her like that.

Then he spun her around so quickly she let out a little scream, and had her pressed back against the counter in the same second. He stopped then, his chest heaving, beautiful sleet-grey eyes dark with desire. They traveled slowly all the way down her body and back up. She felt her skin prickle where his eyes fell, and tried to think over the spinning in her head and her pulse loud in her ears. _Why did he stop?_

She was suddenly angry. How dare he get her all hot and then just stop like that? His lips twisted up in a smirk as he took in the sudden change in her expression. "Impatient, aren't you kitten?" he chuckled quietly, still deliciously pressed against her from the waist down but making no move to pick up where he'd left off.

_He's laughing at you!_ And 'kitten'? Hell, no. Hermione Granger did not take belittlement lightly, least of all from Draco Fucking Malfoy, no matter how much she wanted him to tear off the rest of her clothes and do her right then. _Time to take control._

She smiled up at him, letting all her desire for him show in her eyes and slowly licked her lips. His smirk faltered ever so slightly. He was in control, the way he so loved to be, but barely. She stretched up onto her toes and entwined herself as close as she could to him. Bringing her lips to his ear, she breathed, "Please. Don't stop. I want you. Please, Draco." The low moan in his throat at the sound of his name on her lips set her heart racing again, but she controlled it and waited for him to react.

Boy, did he react. He kissed her so hard she felt it till the soles of her feet. It was mind-boggling. Her hands went to his soft, silky hair, entangling themselves in it and pulling his head closer. She slid her tongue into his mouth, tasting him. He moaned again, louder this time. And finally he did what she'd been waiting for. In a move to grab her face and angle it for better access he took his hands off her hips where he'd been holding her with an iron grip. It was all she needed. She pushed him.

His eyes flew open as he toppled backwards, too surprised to catch his balance. He fell with a muffled yell onto the white mattress she'd conjured the second after she'd pushed him. She jumped on top of him and straddled him before he had a chance to recover from the shock, and used her wand to tie his hands together with satin ropes at the wrist and then slice his navy t-shirt in half before she ripped it off him.

His face had settled into an amused smile now, but she thought she saw a flash of uncertainty in those gorgeous eyes. She grinned down at him, "Two can play at this game, Malfoy," and she realized the truth to her words with a sudden shock. This was a game. If it wasn't he would've thrown her off him in a second instead of lying back and waiting for her next move. This was a game. Exciting, sexy, casual, dangerous. And she loved it.

She looked down at him, the implications of her epiphany making her feel oddly bold, and caught a flash of emotion across his face at her words.

Pain.


	2. Chapter 2

**AN:** Thank you guys for reading and reviewing! :* Please continue to do so, it makes me happy.

Okay this chapter contains a few flashbacks, all Hermione POV. Just to flesh out the story a little. No smut in this one, I'm sorry. Our sexy couple will continue their steamy, little kitchen escapade in chapter 3, though, and later chapters will have flashbacks of the two make-out sessions mentioned in chapter 1, so stay tuned lovelies!

**Hermione's cottage, an hour ago**

Her head snapped up when she heard the handle of the front door turn. He was home.

Ginny came into the kitchen just then and started casting Cleaning Charms in every direction, trying to get the worst of the mess.

"There's no point, Gin," Hermione said, wringing her hands and shooing Ginny out, "he's back. For the love of Merlin go stall him till I clean up in here."

Ginny made for the living room immediately, looking back at her best friend with a smirk on her pretty face, "Fuck. So much for your 'surprise'! Ah well. Stop freaking out, Hermione. You look like you've been Confunded! What's the worst that cou- _Oh hello Malfoy_!"

Hermione couldn't help but smile inspite of her anxiety and disappointment as the sudden acceleration of her heartbeat perfectly complemented the jump in pitch of Ginny's last three words. Draco Malfoy elicited many reactions from people, both positive and negative, but the notion that hit you first when you saw him was a strange form of apprehension.

In the past six months that he'd been living there she had used her considerable mental resources to the fullest, trying to pinpoint the exact reason for the way people reacted to him, the way she continued to react to his presence even now.

She still hadn't found the answer. She had settled for Ginny's reasoning: "It's just this aura he has. Like when we saw that white tiger when you took us to the muggle zoo last year. It's gorgeous, so sinuous and mesmerizing that you can't seem to tear your eyes away. And then you're suddenly frozen, because you're so drawn to it and your logic says it can't hurt you, so you want to take those couple of steps forward and press yourself to the bars of the cage and stick your hand through. But your instinct says run, it says that no matter how beautiful and tame it looks, no matter how out of place in this civilized, man-made habitat, this creature will destroy you in a second."

Ginny began chattering to him non-stop, even taking him by the hand and leading him from the front door into the living room of the little cottage, so that he wouldn't see Hermione just yet. Hermione made a mental note to make it up to her as soon as she could. Ginny accepted his presence in her life with a wariness that Hermione knew was the product of so many years worth of seeing him as evil through and through.

Ginny respected her best friend and trusted that she was smart enough to know what she was getting into, but she was still vaguely uncomfortable around him and preferred to make herself scarce when he was present.

It had taken Hermione herself quite a while to even have him within twenty feet of her without having to suppress the urge to curse his balls off. The problem was that while Malfoy seemed to be willing to spend every ounce of his time and energy on convincing her that he deserved a chance, he was less than concerned about what anybody else in the entire world thought of him.

In a way it made Hermione feel special, but half a year ago, it had also left her with the insanely difficult job of explaining to her best friends why, to use Ron's crude but accurate depiction of what they thought of the whole thing at the time, she was 'shacking up with the Snake Prince.'

**Harry's house- No. 12, Grimmauld Place, six months ago**

"You have _got_ to be joking!" Ron exclaimed, "you let that _vermin_ into your _house_? And you're going to let him stay? Blimey, 'Mione, have you_ lost your mind_?"

"Shut up, Ron," Harry intervened, "let her talk."

He turned to Hermione, "you do have a good explanation for this, don't you?" Hermione saw his green eyes flash with what he wasn't saying: you'd_ better_ have a good explanation for this.

She looked at Ginny for reassurance, but she was staring at her with an expression that perfectly mirrored the boys'- shock, confusion and concern.

Hermione took a deep breath, "Look. You've got to trust me. I know what I'm doin-" "You bloody well DO NOT!" Ron interrupted, his fists were clenched so tightly his knuckles had turned white, "Godric, did you even think twice before letting a fucking _Death-Eater_ into your home?"

Though they had broken up a year ago, Ron was still prone to bouts of overprotective, possessive behaviour that Hermione was usually quick to shut down. But this time she didn't; he was justified.

"Ronald if you do not control yourself this instant, I will hex you," Ginny warned, sounding ominously like her mother, "let her finish."

Hermione knew her best friends deserved a good explanation. And she knew that her reasons for letting Malfoy sleep in her house when he'd turned up on her doorstep last night, and agreeing to let him stay for a while, were extremely good. But she couldn't tell them those reasons. She had promised that she wouldn't.

"I know, Ron. You don't think I do? You don't think I remember how he tortured us, tortured _me_, in school? He's was vile, arrogant, cowardly, and a Death-Eater. Believe me,_ I know_. But the war ended two years ago. The Light won. Voldemort is dead and everyone is moving on with their lives. People change. He's not the same person that he was. He's been through..a lot in the past couple of years. He just needs a place to lie low for some time, and I'm giving him that, nothing more. I'm not saying he's turned into a saint. He's still Draco Malfoy and he still deserves to be treated with every ounce of caution I possess. I'm aware of that. Just trust me, please."

"How do you know?" Ginny asked softly, "how can you be so sure that he's changed? How do you know what he's been through? Nobody's seen him or heard a thing from or of him ever since Voldemort went down. We'd know otherwise. I assumed he'd fled the country, what with nearly all the Death-Eaters dead and his father under house arrest in Malfoy Manor."

This was getting dangerously close to what she couldn't divulge. She was walking a razor sharp line, keeping secrets rather than telling lies. Her heart ached, but she had promised.

She settled for a half-truth, "I've met him twice in the past two years." Ron's outraged gasp was sure to be followed by a _'Why didn't you tell me?'_ so she continued quickly, "they were both chance meetings, but they, along with what he told me last night, are enough to convince me. I'm not saying he's innocent, or even good. All I'm saying is that when you and Harry were opposing the Ministry's decision to put the remaining Death-Eaters and their entire families to death, you said it was because they deserved a second chance. That's all I'm doing, giving him a second chance."

She scanned their faces. Ron look confused, but no longer furious. That, in itself, was a win.

Harry looked placated. She'd known that he'd be the easiest to convince.

Their bond of friendship had deepened to such an extent after those terrible days during their search for horcruxes when Ron had left them, they'd had only each other and had gone through the horror in Godric's Hollow together, that he trusted her judgment implicitly, sometimes even more than she herself did. She loved him all the more for it.

Also, Harry had changed so much since the war. His scars, most of them internal, had faded slightly. His enmity with Malfoy had been intense, but two years of recovery and happiness with Ginny had softened him considerably in many ways. The awful, desperate, hunted glint to his eyes that she had grown accustomed to then had disappeared. He was once again the quiet, easy-going, genuinely sweet boy that she remembered from her first year in Hogwarts, strengthened now by experience, love, family, and a profound joy and gratitude for every moment that he was given.

Even in his dark moments, which were becoming more and more rare, when he became withdrawn and reticent, that glow still shone from him like an unquenchable fire. He was the strongest man she had ever known. She remembered Ron's surprisingly eloquent toast at Harry's birthday dinner at the Burrow last year, "Who would have thought that The Boy Who Lived needed to die to truly learn how to live. Godric, are we grateful that he did."

Ginny smiled, "I trust you, babe. You've always had your head screwed on right. Just be careful, and you know we're all of us only a Floo away." And then she winked, "and try not to bang him, yeah? I wouldn't be able to make that promise if he was living in my house. Evil snake or reformed wizard,_ gods_ is that man gorgeous."

Hermione laughed out loud at the identical squeaks that emanated from Harry and Ron. She decided not to tell Ginny that she was unfortunately extremely aware of how gorgeous Draco Malfoy was. And that, more than anything else, was what made her question her decision to help him.

**Hermione's cottage, an hour ago**

Footsteps snapped her out of her reverie. _Agh, he's coming_.

"Little Red, you're extremely convincing at stalling me, but would you care to explain why the cottage smells of burnt food and where exactly the owner of it is right now?"

"In the kitchen," Ginny sounded defeated. "You go on. I'm going to Harry's, he's expecting me."

"Give my love to scarhead."

Ginny's parting snort was the last thing Hermione heard before his form entered the kitchen doorway. She looked around the kitchen frantically. She was no closer to cleaning up than when he'd come home. Every visible surface was flecked with flour and chocolate batter. She smacked herself mentally for not at least using a charm to get rid of the burnt smell. _Stupid stupid stupid._ His expression was so surprised she wanted to laugh and cry at the same time at the irony.

And then he met her eyes, and she was burning. How did he do this to her? Did he even know the effect he had on her?

She looked down at the counter, trying the control her wildly veering emotions. And then she heard him walk up to her. He was going to see the full extent of the disaster.

Fuck.


	3. Chapter 3

**AN:** This chapter has some roughness and possibly dubious consent for a few minutes so DO NOT READ if that is going to bother you.

I'm sorry it took me so long, lovelies, I was internet-less for a couple of weeks. Thank you tons and tons, all of you who reviewed and put this on your Story Alerts and Favourite Stories. I love you.

The next chapter has Draco-angst, so stay tuned!

Every time you review, a Hippogriff gets its wings.

**Hermione's cottage, the present**

She froze, all her excitement deflating instantly. She'd upset him.

"Wh-what's wrong?"

His face was impassive. Storm-cloud grey eyes previously raging with lust were now icy and opaque. He refused to even look at her, staring up at the ceiling instead, jaw clenched. He didn't answer.

A heavy weight settled on her chest and her heart plummeted. She severed the satin ties around his wrists and stood up, wanting to put her top back on. She felt too vulnerable like this.

She leaned down to pick it up from where he'd thrown it, racking her brain all the while trying to figure out what had caused the sudden change in him. Was he really that incapable of not being in control? He wasn't that immature, was he? To throw a tantrum just because she'd one-upped him? Did he dislike being tied up? No, that was stupid. He knew he could've gotten out of her pitiful bindings in a flash.

What the fuck was his problem then?

Lost in her frantic musings, she yelped when he came up behind her and caught her wrist. The tank top was ripped out of her hand and thrown back to the floor. She waited quietly for his next move, not wanting to upset him again.

The grip on her wrist was starting to feel uncomfortably tight now.

Suddenly he yanked it behind her back, twisting her arm around in the process. She winced, but didn't make a sound, still waiting for him to say something.

His other arm came around her, holding her just above her breasts, and clasping her to him. Her shoulder blades were pressed to the solid planes of his bare chest. He just stood there like that. Inexplicably, a tiny thrill raced through her. He was holding her so tightly she could feel his every breath vibrate through his chest. She clenched her free hand into a fist at her side, nervous.

Something about the whole thing felt..off. The way he was gripping her arm, not tightly enough to really cause pain, but twisted just enough to make it uncomfortable. The strange rigidity to him that she could feel, pinned against him as she was. The fact that he hadn't said a single word to her. His hand that wasn't keeping her arm twisted behind her back was now splayed over her bare stomach; it felt nice, but strange. All of it put together made a small frisson of unease crawl through her chest.

He spun her around then, and dropped his hands. There were a few inches of distance between them, and he made no move to close it. He just stood there and stared at her face, eyes skipping rapidly between her own and to her lips and back. It looked almost manic, but the iciness behind them was still evident.

_This is your chance. Say something. Ask him what upset him._

But she didn't listen to the voice in her head, which was new for her. She _always_ listened to the voice in her head. She didn't know what it was that had suddenly made her so reckless, but she decided to push him.

"Well? Are you going to just stand there? Gods you're such a child, throwing a tantrum just because you didn't win. And now you- Oh, _oh_!"

He'd closed the distance.

She tried to think over the heat pooling between her legs as he suckled on that special spot on her neck, but she couldn't. His hands travelled up from the small of her back and buried themselves in her hair, angling her face upwards. She parted her lips, hungry for a taste of him. But he just held her head like and looked at her. A smile touched his lips.

Fear, cold and paralyzing, shot through her veins with such intensity she thought she'd have a heart attack. That smile. It brought haunting echoes of "_filthy mudblood_" and the demented roaring of a Fiendfyre from so many years ago to her mind. This wasn't the man she'd gotten to know in the past six months, this was the boy she'd grown to hate with every fiber of her being for seven years.

She realized then that her friends had been right, and she had been a fool. She had told them, convinced them, and herself, that she could handle this, handle him. That no matter what he did, how much he seemed like he'd changed, she would never let herself forget the person that he was. She had promised that she would stay on her guard because, even though she was helping him and she was letting him sleep in her house, he was still Draco Malfoy, still his father's son, still a former Death-Eater and there would always be a darkness inside him. But against all logic and reason, she'd forgotten. She'd let herself be lulled into complacency, and she'd started to trust him, to care about him. She'd kissed him, and let him put his hands on her and she'd loved it. She'd tried to bake him a fucking _birthday cake_.

_Stupid. Stupid. Stupid._

Alarm bells clanging in her head, she instinctively went to take a step back. But his hand was on her lower back again, holding her to him tightly, too tightly. He noted the change in her expression, and the twisted smile grew wider. His eyes were dark, almost black. This face looking down at her was a demon long-forgotten, a ghost from a past she thought she'd put behind her, and it was the most frightening thing she'd seen in years.

His hand came up to touch her chin, the caress strangely at odds with the menace that radiated from his face. She felt herself go still in confusion. He tilted her face backwards slightly, and then gripped her jaw so hard a shooting pain passed through her temples. The lips that were curved in that horrible sneer crashed into hers.

And it was insanity.

He kissed her harshly, aggressively, raping her mouth with his tongue, his teeth clashing against hers, and biting down on her lower lip hard enough to bruise. Immediately her hands came up to push him off of her. But he ignored it as if he didn't even feel it.

His roughness at the start of this entire encounter that had made her all hot and excited was nothing. It was playful. It was feathers and satin, compared to this. This..this was _brutal_. He came close to breaking the skin on her neck with his teeth again and again, making her cry out loudly in pain. She forced herself to go limp, hoping he'd realize. Hoping he'd stop.

His hands were everywhere, now fisting her hair painfully, now grasping her hips so tightly she knew it would ache for days, now pulling her forcefully against him as her ground himself into her.

And her body, her foolish,_ traitor_ body, began to respond to it. Her heartbeat sped up, her breath coming in gasps through her abused lips, which melded themselves to his. Her hands traced the smooth, sinuous lines of his back; he growled low in his throat at this. The sound shot through like electricity. She bit his lips back, relishing strangely in the sharp breath he took when she did, and ground her hips against his.

_Stop stop stop. This isn't safe. You don't know this Draco. This Draco isn't safe. _She screamed at herself mentally, but it was pointless.

Fear thrummed through her veins, quietly telling her that she should stop him, Stupefy him, Bodybind him. But it was drowned out by the roaring in her ears and her own escalating moans when he finally, finally ripped off her bra and lowered his mouth to her breast.

He laved it all over with his tongue, making her tremble all over. Her nipples, already sprung to attention, began aching for his touch.

He lifted his head then and looked up at her. She whined at the loss of contact and arched herself further into him. She threw her head back and closed her eyes; refusing to look at him for fear that he'd still be smiling in that way. And then she felt her left nipple engulfed in warmth and wetness, and she moaned so loudly it echoed in the small kitchen. His hand came up to tease her right nipple as hers tangled themselves in his silky hair.

_Gods yes, yes, ohh_

Again and again he suckled on her. Sharp whimpers of pain as he bit down and grazed with his teeth alternated with incoherent cries at the sheer, maddening ecstasy that he was bringing her. She had never before walked this line of pleasure-pain; it was mindblowing.

She vaguely realized that at some point her legs had wrapped themselves around his hips like a vice, pressing, grinding her now drenched core into his hardened length. Even through the layers of clothing, the feeling was exquisite. Added to the jolts of electricity radiating through her body from her breasts, it brought her to the edge of all reason.

He turned then and slammed her so hard against the wall it knocked the breath out of her. The voice in her head cried in fear, in warning, but to no avail. She didn't want breath, she didn't want safety. She didn't care if the man who was currently attacking her nipples and grinding himself so aggressively into her groin was evil. All she wanted was him.

She adjusted her hips so that his erection pressed directly where she needed it to be. She felt her hips thrusting forward to meet his, hating the denim and cloth barrier in between, reaching desperately to soothe the burning need between her thighs.

Every nerve in her body was like a livewire, sparking with near blinding pleasure every time his tongue touched her breast or his hips pressed him into her. It was beautiful and terribly, terribly addictive. She realized then with shocking clarity that she never wanted this to stop, no matter the consequence. It was a vaguely terrifying thought for someone such as her- so used to being cool-headed and possessed of foresight.

She felt her womb tighten and her legs go loose and boneless around him. Her breath was rushing in great gasps through her lips as she threw her head back into the wall and arched into him further. Tidal waves of pleasure crashed over her. She grit her teeth, fighting desperately to stay in control as every base instinct in her body clawed at her, begged her to let go.

"Let go," he whispered, not even looking up from her breast, "give yourself to me."

"Yes gods yes I'm yours please _please yes_," she moaned, and with one last rasp of his pink tongue over her nipples he grabbed her hips, shoved her into the wall hard and thrust himself against her, and she let go.

The climax hit her with such intensity she was sure she would die from it. She heard herself wailing, moaning, screaming unintelligibly as her body shook like a leaf in a storm of sensations that were raw and wonderful and mind boggling.

She descended slowly, regaining control of her limbs and her erratic heartbeat and realized that he still had her against the wall, his head buried in the bend of her neck and shoulder. She felt sore and she knew she'd need more than a few Healing Charms to prevent herself from becoming a jigsaw of purple bruises tomorrow, but her head was still pleasantly fuzzy. She noticed a long streak of chocolate batter across his back and giggled.

"Okay we need to talk about what happened earlier, you- Ow you're hurting me." His hands were still digging into her hips.

Without any, ahem, other sensations to distract from it, the pain was nearly overwhelming.

"Seriously Malfoy, stop- AHH STOP!" she screamed when he only responded by digging his fingers harder into her flesh. Tears formed in her eyes, but she blinked them away.

_Try one last time. If he doesn't stop, curse him into oblivion._

"Get your hands _off me_!"

His hands loosened their hold, fingers flexing away from her.

He lifted his head then, and looked at her, and she wanted to cry in fear.

The smile was gone, but his eyes were still dark and hollow. She shivered, but this time in terror, as he brought his lips to her ear and whispered, "What's wrong? I thought you wanted to play, _Granger._"

The menace in his voice, the way he'd twisted her name, she knew what had pissed him off now. The voice in her head shrieked at her to get away from him.

She began to struggle against him, clawing at his arms, at his back, kicking with her feet, because she realized then that her wand was on the floor a few feet away, and she needed to get to it. She needed to protect herself.

She was pinned, though, by his hips and his arms, and her futile struggling did nothing but heighten the fear spiking through her veins. He gripped her shoulders and shoved her against the wall again and she cried out as her shoulder blades slammed into it with such force she was sure they'd shattered, and then he dropped her to the floor in a heap.

She scrambled away from him, grabbed her wand and Accio'd her bra and top, fumbling to put them back on. He stood there, looking down at her. The expression on his face was inscrutable, cast in shadow as it was in this angle.

_Okay, think. Deal with him later. Calm him down now_.

She took a deep breath, "Draco, I'm sorry," she began, realizing that she was pointing her wand at him as she spoke, and deciding not to lower it till she was sure he wasn't going to hurt her anymore.

"Don't." The expression on his face may not have been readable, but his voice..his voice was so filled with pain it pierced through her like a knife. His arms were crossed, but instead of looking haughty, the posture made him look suddenly diminished, tired. He looked like he was hugging himself, as if to ward off a chill.

"_Please._" he sounded hoarse, on the verge of breaking, "J_ust don't._" And then he walked away.

The sound of the front door opening and shutting softly was the last thing Hermione heard before she curled up on the white mattress. Godric, it felt like she'd conjured it more than a day ago instead of only a couple of hours.

How did so much change, so much happen, in such little time?

She buried her face in her knees and let the sobs that had welled up in her throat break free and claim her.


	4. Chapter 4

**AN: **Hello lovelies! I'm so so so sorry that it's taken so long. You've all probably forgotten me. Family issues and college and bitchy friends got in the way. But it's done and it's here! Yaaay

This is a Draco POV chapter. I hope you like it.

Thank you everyone who reviewed and favourite-d and story alert-ed. Nutella for all of you! :*

Please please please review and tell me what you think. What do you think Hermione will see in Draco's mind?

I've decided to give song suggestions for each chapter if I think of any. For this one:** _Burn It Down by Linkin Park _**

The lyrics just seem perfect, especially for the last half of the chapter. Give it a listen while you're reading if you want.

Song suggestions for the previous chapters, anyone?

As always, I love you for reading!

* * *

**Hermione's cottage, the present**

Draco conjured himself a black t-shirt as he walked out of the cottage, nearly conjuring robes first and catching himself before he did. He sighed as he pulled it on. He still wasn't used to having to wear Muggle clothes ever since he'd started living in this little cottage. It was extremely well-hidden by its position on the side of the hill with the most dense foliage on the South-East border of Ottery St. Catchpole, and had all the necessary Muggle-repelling enchantments, of course, but Hermione'd insisted on complete discretion, not wanting to ever have to leave the little home that she'd come to love so much.

_Hermione..._

He slipped his wand into his pocket and pressed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. His head had been pounding like it was being repeatedly hammered ever since she'd called him.._that_.

Self-loathing and anger battered at him, making him want to Obliviate the memory of her face as she'd sat on the floor, hunched in on herself. _You'll always be a monster. You'll never escape us, what you are, what you were born with._

Draco ran his hands through his hair, fighting the urge to pull at it in his despair that no matter how hard he tried to prove it wrong, the hissing voice in his head was right, that irrespective of how many times he tried to convince himself that he would somehow escape his cursed legacy, he was evil. And a coward.

He had proved that today: he'd attacked her, practically raped her and then run away without so much as an apology or an explanation.

Truthfully, though, he wasn't sure what he would say even if he were to try to explain. It had been so long since he had felt that way, since he had allowed the black insanity to take control of him. It had possessed him today with such ferocity that he'd been helpless, unable to stop it until it had run its course.

_ "_Weak! Useless! Call yourself a Malfoy? You're a worm, a disgrace to the magnificent legacy of your forefathers!_"_

He ignored the echoes from his haunted past and focussed on the ground.

When he had veered off the tiny path that led away from the cottage and had plunged into the densely treed part of the hillside, he didn't know. But he realized that he had when walking became more of a series of stumbles over knotted roots.

One final stumble brought him crashing to his knees, but the pain in his kneecaps was nothing compared to the agony within.

Draco stared unseeingly through the apple-green sunlight as his breath rushed in rapid bursts through gritted teeth. He struggled to control the grief that was welling up in his chest when he thought of the way she'd scrambled across the floor for her wand. It screamed mistrust. Proof that today had undone the months of effort he had put into convincing her that he deserved her help and kindness.

He clutched at his hair with both hands, relishing how the sharp sting took away slightly from the pounding inside his head, and vaguely registered how utterly insane he would look to anyone who chanced upon him at that moment. But he didn't care. It had been a long time since Draco Malfoy had been the kind of person who cared about what anybody else thought of him.

The expression on her face after he had dropped her on the floor was a perfect replica of the one she had worn the night that he'd turned up on her doorstep: her eyes widened in shock and fear, her wand pointed directly at him.

** 6 months ago, Ottery St. Catchpole, a little before midnight**

His thin, matted, shirt was covered in blood that looked more black than red under the jaundiced light of the streetlamp, and was now turning to a spreading, diluted pink as driving sheets of rain soaked into it. Draco Malfoy staggered from the deserted street that he had just Apparated into and prayed to Salazar's soul that he was in the right place, his weariness made bone-deep by the icy rain that seemed to pierce his skin like needles.

The small piece of silver clutched in his left hand was starting to cut into his palm, but he didn't loosen his grip on it. By all logic it should have felt icy but, strangely, it was the only warmth that he could feel in that tormented night.

Had he been in a less desolate state of mind, he may have scoffed at the unassuming smallness of the Muggle town, with its cobbled streets and tiny houses. He registered immediately that the large number of convenient hills and dense foliage that surrounded it must have made it easy for the magical population to live, hidden away from Muggle eyes. It was one such hideaway magical resident that he had come here for, though he still didn't know what he would ask of her once he found her.

Draco squinted through the downpour and scanned the shadowy hills in the distance, dotted here and there with feathery outlines of clusters of trees. As he focussed on one particular hill that looked curiously flattened and seemed more densely wooded than the others, the metal in his left fist became slightly warmer.

And, ever so gently, it _pulled_.

He closed his eyes and allowed his consciousness to collapse until the rain and the cold and the blood and the voice in his head- _She's going to kill you the minute you turn up at her door. You know she will. You want her to, don't you? Because you know what will happen if she doesn't. What will happen to her. What YOU will do to her. She'll scream the way we like, won't she Draco? Sharp and sweet and helpless. You'll make her scream for us, WON'T YOU DRACO?_- it all faded away and everything was just that spot of heat radiating against his palm and through fingers.

He took a deep breath, and stepped into the blackness of Apparition.

The small clearing that he turned up in was almost fully enclosed by bushes and trees that aided in shrouding the area in almost complete darkness. A Lumos gave him enough light to find a skinny path struggling away from the clearing through two closely-growing, gnarled trees. He squeezed himself through the trees, summoning up every last reserve of strength he possessed in his effort not to collapse when his multiple wounds screamed in reproach, and began to walk down the path quickly.

But with every step his pain doubled until he had to stop and lean his shoulder against the rough trunk of a tree. He didn't know exactly where his wounds were, or whether any of them were internal, or how to treat them.

He did know for a fact that if he gave in to their burning and to the exhaustion he would lose the will to go on, and probably die there in that lonely forest, only a few steps from his only hope for absolution. And his only hope for revenge.

**Malfoy Manor, two hours previously**

The House Elf Apparated with a loud crack by his ear and put a cold, hard something in his half-closed palm, its eyes floating over his face like luminous orbs in the flickering orange of the fireplace.

Hatred and despair had been roaring through his blood for what felt like hours and his throat was ragged from screaming and screaming. His ears rang with the deafening echoes of two voices, one manic, like bubbling acid.

And the other that rang with defiance and fear; a voice that was now silenced for good.

He lay limp and gasping, curled up on the polished floor, barely registering the familiar feeling of bleeding until he was lying in a clotting, ruby pool of his own, and that of the tears, sweat and saliva that covered his face and chin drying and leaving behind their salty residue.

And praying, like he had prayed every day for months, for death.

He dismissed the House Elf as a figment, an illusion created by his convoluted, abused mind in its last, stumbling moments.

The edges of his vision began to darken, and he welcomed it with a strength of feeling that he hadn't experienced in a long time.

But then his jaw was forced open and a bitter liquid was poured into his mouth. He swallowed, and then cried out hoarsely as everything became brighter, and it brought every point of pain on his body into crippling focus.

He found that he was suddenly strong enough to sit up, and then stand on shaky legs.

"LIES ALL LIES...TRAITOR... I AM SO ALONE SO ALONE. MASTER... COME..." The crazed voice railed on in the distance, but apart from that the Manor lay silent.

The silence clawed at his heart, and he would have broken down with fresh sobs if he had had any left, but apparently the potion hadn't replenished his tear ducts.

His illusion was speaking to him. He looked down at it.

"Mr. Draco you must listen to Winky. No, it's for you. Take it. And you must go!" She was still pressing the piece of metal into his hand.

"How do you know who I am?" he rasped, "Who-"

"Dobby, Mr. Draco. He told Winky. He gave Winky a mission. He said, 'Tell Master Draco to become the White.' That's what Dobby said. _Become the White and find her_," she stressed the last few words with an urgency that Draco felt in his bones, but didn't understand.

"Dobby... White? Find whom? No..I have to stay. I have to..to kill.."

"NO! GO NOW. The potion will wear off soon," small hands were pushing him and he stumbled towards the door, "You will die here if you do not go. She will help you and then you can come back. Do you understand, Mr. Draco? Then you can come back. But you _must_ go now."

Draco braced himself against the doorframe, bewildered, and looked down at the silver thing in his palm. A name was etched into it. A name that convinced him at once that, figment or not, the House Elf was right. He went.

**6 months ago, The outskirts of Ottery St. Catchpole**

And now he was here in this forest so dense that even the downpour of rain failed to penetrate its canopy.

_She'll scream for us like honey and blood._

Now the potion had worn off.

_"Stop whimpering. It's just a few scratches. Stand up and face me, maggot. You're WEAK! STAND UP!"_

Now he could scarcely keep himself standing, even leaning against the tree.

_Become the White and find her_.

Now- a memory rose to Draco's mind.

It was the thirty-second night of his Sixth Year in Hogwarts and Draco was cracking. Burdened with his damned mission, exhausted from pretending that he knew exactly what he was doing, terrified that he would go home to the corpses of his parents because he would fail. Fail. _Failure._

He had lain awake well into the early hours of every single morning since the beginning of the Year, convinced that he could physically _feel _his sanity slowly slipping away; his outward deathly stillness belying the maelstrom within.

He started violently when the emerald hangings around his bed were ripped open. He was bolt upright in a second and then anguished grey eyes were staring into concerned sable ones.

"Mate, you alright?"

"What's it to you, Zabini?" he mumbled gruffly, trying to inject some strength into his voice.

Zabini's expression didn't flicker. "You may surround yourself with oafs like Crabbe, Goyle and Parkinson who can't tell their arses from their heads, but you forget that I've known you the longest. Talk to me, D. I want to help you."

"You don't know a fucking thing, and Slytherins don't _help_ unless they have a motive," Draco sneered,"Now I don't have time to listen to your blather. Do you have anything of importance to say? If not, get the fuck out of my face."

Zabini sighed, impatience etched into the frown that was forming on his face. "D, I don't want a single, fucking thing from you. I just... I just want to say that where you are right now, that could be any of us. I thank Salazar's soul every second that it isn't me. I know you don't want help, or sympathy. But five years of sleeping in the next bed is long enough to know your breathing patterns when you're asleep. And as far as I can tell you've been awake all night, _every night_, for a month. Have you looked in a mirror recently? You look like shit. Like a fucking ghost. If you're not careful Dumbledore or Potter will notice-"

"SHUT UP AND LEAVE ME ALONE," Draco roared, jumping up and drawing his wand. It felt good- the aggression. It felt more like him, and less like the terrified, crying soul he saw in that damned bathroom mirror every day.

Zabini's eyes flicked from his face to his outstretched wand. He backed off immediately, raising his hands in a gesture of innocence. "Okay. Okay. I'm leaving." He turned and began to walk to the door of the dorm. Just as he reached it, he stopped and half-turned. "You know what my mother always tells me to do when I can't sleep?" he asked quietly.

"I don't care, Blaise." Draco felt the words break in his throat and his shoulders hunch in, and he willed away the frustrated tears building behind his lids.

"She tells me to go for a run and clear my head. You always liked running, liked speed, didn't you D?" He was out of the doorway before Draco could answer.

Not knowing what to do with himself, Draco decided to go to the place that had become his haven and prison in equal parts. But this time when he paced back and forth in front of it, just as he was visualizing the Room of Hidden Things, Blaise's words echoed in his mind. _Go for a run and clear my head._

When the door materialized and he opened it, a smile crossed his face for the first time in months. He was standing in the middle of what seemed to be a huge, grassy field. He whipped around, and sure enough the door he had just come through was behind him. But it stood completely detached from walls of any kind. He looked up, and was met with a blinding, blue-white sky, complete with wispy clouds. There was even a light, crisp breeze blowing, that lifted the strands of hair on his forehead and smelled refreshingly of earth and greenery.

He took a few moments to theorize that the Room must have just made use of the Undetectable Extension Charm that allowed it to turn into a cavernous cathedral-like space when it was the one that contained the Hidden Things to turn into this seemingly boundless, undulating space, and that the sky had the same enchantment as the one on the ceiling of the Great Hall

That done, he proceeded to walk around a bit, sighing as he felt all the tension and fear start to bleed away. He recognized a restlessness in his muscles that he had ignored for too long, the need to stretch and move after being cooped up and cowed both at home and since he had begun the Year at Hogwarts. Taking a deep, invigorating breath, Draco summoned up the warmth from his chest and let it spread through him. Once it had suffused his entire being with the pulsing glow, he let it burst out from his skin, and he ran.

With every rush of air through his lungs and every pounding step on the springy, green ground his anguish faded. The cold, hollow fear that had taken up permanent residence in his skull seemed to ebb away, replaced by a blank, peaceful mindlessness that he vowed he would from then on take refuge in whenever he felt on the verge of breaking.

It was a vow that he never fulfilled though, because that night he received the first Howler of the nine he would receive that year, all filled with his father's blood-curdling screams and pleas for mercy as Voldemort performed the Cruciatus Curse on him. A reminder, Voldemort had said, of what he was causing with every day that he wasted without completing his mission and a small taste of his and his parents' fates, should he fail.

When he was finally ready to leave the Room of Requirement, his heart pounding, but for the first time in a month in euphoria rather than in angst, he located the strange stand-alone door and made for it, when he saw a small form in a strange assortment of clothing standing by it. Fear spiked through him when he realized that he had forgotten to ask for the Room to make itself impenetrable to anybody else. Drawing his wand as he walked, he prepared to Obliviate whoever it was. But as he neared and the figure resolved itself, he realized that he knew who it was, and that it wasn't human.

"Dobby?" he whispered in shock.

The House-Elf was shaking, his orb-like eyes reflecting terror. "Dobby... D-Dobby is sorry Master Draco. Dobby won't tell."

Draco knew that Dobby wouldn't. He had worked for the Malfoys for too long to have lost all of his mindless devotion to them. But just to be safe, Draco injected an unnecessary amount of cruelty into his voice and hissed, "You'd better not, Elf. You know what happens when you disobey."

Leaving Dobby rocking back and forth in a tearful, trembling heap, Draco yanked open the door. Just as he walked through it he heard the House-Elf whisper, "You were beautiful, Master Draco. Beautiful white..."

With a gasp Draco drew himself back to the present, and the forest closed back in around him.

He knew what he had to do now.

Closing his eyes tight, he tried to control his breathing. He hadn't focussed on that warmth in years, and he was suddenly terrified that he wouldn't find it.

But it was there. Shrivelled, dormant, barely alive, but very much there. He didn't know how, maybe the potion hadn't completely worn off yet, but he managed to summon it up from his chest and let it spread through his body. His pain flared up worse than ever, and he let out a roar of agony as his knees buckled and he fell on all fours. Still the warmth spread, and within seconds it was bursting out through his skin and he was running.

The forest flashed past him as he sped down the tiny pathway, a dark, shadowy blur all around him that he smelled more than saw. Within minutes he was in view of a low cottage in a small clearing. It was cloaked in darkness and no lights burned in the windows, but he knew she was there. He could feel the pull from the Trouverus Spell on her Prefect's Badge drawing him towards her.

Within seconds he was at her doorstep. His wounds cried out sharper than ever, his lungs burned with every laboured breath, bone-deep exhaustion threatened to overcome him.

Rain-drenched and freezing, Draco's teeth began to click together harshly as his shivering worsened. His vision began to tunnel, and with the last miniscule ounce of energy he had left, he staggered onto her doorstep, fell to the floor and kicked the door once, twice, as hard as he could.

She will come.

She has to.

And she had.

He had woken up on a soft couch, covered in a thick quilt. The first thing he registered was that he was naked under the quilt. And the second was that for the first time in over a year, he was utterly without pain.

Hermione Granger was standing by his feet, her wand pointed directly at his chest, the tip wavering ever so slightly. He pushed himself up so his neck was supported by the armrest, and looked at her. Her hair was pulled back, leaving only a few stray, coffee-coloured tendrils floating free around her face. She was wrapped in a faded blue robe, cinched tightly. Her narrow shoulders and narrower waist gave her a strangely frail aura. But the strength that flashed in her shock-widened caramel eyes dispelled that aura easily.

Strangely elated by the feeling of safety and healing that was glowing within him, he felt himself fall back into his old Hogwarts routine with her. A small smirk curved his lips. "Hello, Granger."

If her eyes had been wide with shock before, they were as large as dinner plates now. Her wand didn't lower. He wasn't surprised at that.

"Malfoy, what in Godric's name are you _doing_ here?" She was whispering for some reason.

He opened his mouth and then closed it, realizing that he didn't know how to answer that question.

As her shock began to give way to confusion her lips pursed and her brow furrowed until her expression exactly matched the one that had always adorned her face in Hogwarts on those rare occasions when a teacher asked a question that she didn't know the answer to.

In the buoyant state that he was in, that expression just served to widen his smirk. "Nice night for it, eh?" He was sure in that moment that she thought him completely insane.

"Wh- Wait." She flicked her wand in the direction of what he guessed was the kitchen, because in a few moments a steaming mug of something was zooming towards them. It stopped in front of her, hovering near her shoulder, and she clasped it by the handle and placed it on the little table next to his head.

"Drink that," she ordered.

"Veritaserum?" he asked, still smiling. He had expected this.

"Merlin help me, I _should_ force some into you, and I just might. But I," she stopped to take a shaky breath, "I have decided to give you the chance to explain yourself without coercion first."

"Then what is it?" He eyed the ridiculously bright, yellow mug suspiciously.

"Coffee. Strong coffee. You seem... delirious."

He snorted, but didn't deny it. He had good enough reason to be delirious.

Draco sat up halfway, wrapping the quilt around himself securely, and reached out to grab the handle of the mug. He was momentarily distracted by how clean his hand and arm looked before he brought the coffee to his lips. It was hot and very dark, and the shot of caffeine through his veins did a lot to dispel the fuzziness in his brain.

As his strange high faded and the reality of his situation descended upon him, he felt the smirk fall from his face and his throat dry up. He drank some more coffee, and found himself unable to meet her eyes. What explanation could he offer her when he barely knew what he was doing there himself?

Noting the return of reason to his face with a small sigh of relief, she spoke. "These are my questions. If you do not answer them satisfactorily, I will throw you back into the forest without your wand and clothes. If you resist, I will administer a dose of veritaserum so strong you will be telling me things that you don't even think you know. I promise you that." She lifted her hand and began ticking the questions off on her fingers, "Why are you here? What do you want? Why were you bleeding from eight separate gashes on your body? Why are three of your ribs broken? Apart from those there are too many healed and healing scars and fractures to count. Why are your muscles twitching spasmodically? That's evidence of prolonged tort-"

"Don't," he cut her off. His voice came out in a pitiful croak that made him cringe internally. A few tears escaped from underneath his closed lids before he managed to control his wildly veering emotions.

He opened his eyes in time to see her expression soften slightly. But the hand gripping her wand didn't loosen for an instant.

"I _will_ make good on my promise, Malfoy."

Draco swallowed heavily. "I need, I need a place to stay. Just for a few days. A week... at the most."

He sat up fully then, ignoring the quilt as it fell to his lap. She shifted immediately, now standing directly in front of him. "Why did you come to _me_?"

"Because I have nowhere else to go."

A few years ago, admitting something like that, admitting to weakness, would have caused him to gag on his own embarrassment. He didn't care about any of that anymore, but he would be lying if he said that it didn't bruise what little ego he had left to have to accept his destitute state out loud, especially to her.

"What happened to you?"

Anguish welled up in his throat so quickly he nearly choked on it. He rocked back and forth slowly, trying and failing to control the way the hollowness in his chest began to throb.

"My mother," he gasped out, his voice breaking as a wave of grief overcame him, "my mother... is dead."

She took an involuntary step back. "How?"

"He killed her."

Her mouth fell open in a silent gasp. "Lucius." She looked troubled now. "He did this to you? Your _father_?

He looked up and met her eyes now, needing her to see the truth in them and with a voice that was a hundred times steadier than he felt, he answered. "Yes."

"How do I know you're telling the truth?"

"I have nothing to gain by lying."

In the ensuing silence, he realized that desperate measures would have to be taken to gain even an ounce of her trust. He couldn't believe he was about to do this. Taking a deep breath, he offered her his proof.

"I am an accomplished Occlumens. But if that is what it will take to convince you, you may look into my memories from the past six hours."

Her mouth fell open again, this time with an audibly sharp intake of breath. "You... you would let me into your mind?"

"Yes. But don't try to look further back than I have said, you won't able to get past my defences."

Without another word, she looked him dead in the eyes, "_Leglimens_"

He cringed as he felt her presence get sucked into his mind and begin to look through it. It felt horribly wrong and he viciously fought his natural instincts to block her. He felt her go back to exactly six hours ago and begin to watch the events that had taken place in Malfoy Manor.

Having to live through the ordeal again in fast forward brought bile to his throat in a bitter wave. But mercifully, she finished quicker than he expected and honoured his request by not trying to look further back than six hours. When she was done and he opened his eyes, he saw his own horror and agony reflected in the wetly glimmering cinnamon ones that were mere inches from his own. She had somehow ended up sitting in a strange half-kneel right next to him on the couch, her arms wrapped around herself tightly.

She was so close. Closer than he ever remembered her being. In a single gesture, in a second, he could reach out and place his hand on her arm, or her shoulder, or her cheek. The prospect befuddled him. She seemed frozen, even her breathing was almost imperceptible. The only movement about her was the slow course of a tear that had welled from one blankly staring eye down her cheek.

Her scent was delicious, a mix of citrus and berry that was at once both fresh and heady. That scent, along with her proximity, his off-kilter emotions and the fact that he was stark naked under that quilt brought a sense of intimacy to the moment, in response to which he was slowly leaning towards her. Realizing what he was doing, Draco pulled back sharply.

The sudden movement seemed to jolt her out of her trance and she jumped up, drawing her wand in an instant. Without uttering a word, she took his wand out of a pocket in her robe and placed it on the little table and walked out of the Living Room. He watched her walk away. She stopped at the door to what he guessed was her room and turned around. Waving her wand in a complicated pattern, she murmured a spell under her breath. Immediately, the air in a perfect circle with him and the couch at its center crackled with magical energy. Apparently satisfied, she entered the room and shut the door behind her.

Draco picked up his wand and conjured himself some simple robes. Sufficiently clothed, he stood up and walked to the place where the air had crackled under the influence of Granger's spell. Sure enough, the minute he tried to walk through it, it crackled again and he was impeded by an invisible force. She had created a magical barrier.

He walked in a circle and checked the barrier for holes, not because he wanted to escape, he had nowhere else to go, but just out of curiosity. His marvelled at her skill; the spell was simple but effective. He could not get to the two doors that led off from the Living Room or down the corridor that led to the kitchen, or to any of the windows in the Living Room. The only place that the barrier did not stop him from getting to was the front door. The message was clear: he could sleep on the couch if he wished, or he could leave. And that was that.

As he settled himself on the couch and drained the last of the coffee, he let the tears come. His mother was gone. The only person that he had ever truly cared about was dead.

And she had been slaughtered by the man, the_ monster_, that she had blindly devoted herself to for most of her life. Hatred for his father had taken up permanent residence within him a long time ago, and he let it burn through him now. He did not know how, but he knew that he would not find peace until he had avenged his mother's death and his own abuse at the hands of Lucius Malfoy.

Soon after, Draco's exhausted, knotted mind began to wander. A small chuckle bubbled up in his throat when he realized that Granger would probably wake up in the morning convinced that she had just dreamt it all, and then she would open her bedroom door to him on her couch. With that thought in mind, Draco dropped into a sounder sleep than he had had in over a year.

**The forest surrounding Hermione's cottage, the present**

Draco tamped down on his self-flagellation for the time-being. He needed to get back to her. He needed to explain.

The warmth was there, waiting for him. He located it and summoned it. Ever since he had started living in Hermione's home, he had made running a daily ritual. It had strengthened him, and given him a much needed release from his whirlwind thoughts for a few hours each day. It was also very useful when he needed to get through this damned dense forest quickly.

He was at the cottage in a few seconds. He huffed a couple of steadying breaths as he paced up and down outside the front door. When he felt ready, he pushed it open and went in.

The image that met him was so heart-breaking he nearly broke down into torturing himself again for what he had done to her.

She was lying on her side on the white mattress in the kitchen. The area of the mattress around her head was soaked through with her tears and each sob wracked her body violently.

He froze a couple of feet away from her when he saw the first bruise. Her shorts were low on her hips and that little vest-thing she was wearing was short enough that her right hip was almost completely bare. And there it was- an angry, red mark on her previously unblemished skin. It was so stark that he could make out the exact position that each of his fingers had been in when they had dug into her flesh so cruelly.

You BASTARD.

Draco's knees almost gave out. He clenched his fists to keep his self-loathing in control, just for the time-being, just until he spoke to her, and felt his fingernails break the skin of his palm. Warm blood trickled through his fingers. He ignored it.

There were marks on her shoulder blades, too, mottled, pink blotches that he knew would slowly turn blue-black. From when he'd slammed her into the wall like she was a rag doll. His eyes trailed to her neck and his stomach roiled. Her neck was..._ ravaged_. Teeth marks and bruises that had already turned a deep wine colour, from her collar bone to her ear. So violent had his attack on her been that he had actually broken skin in two places, marked by thin lines dotted with blood.

There was a delighted purring in his head that was getting louder. _Yess, make her ache and cry and bleed. All for us._

That there was actually a part of him that took depraved pleasure from this made him want to ram his head into the wall until he blacked out. Until he'd killed that twisted, evil thing inside him.

But you can't. It's not inside you. It IS you.

Revulsion for himself and the evil that resided within him nearly had him running away again, but he knew that if he ever wanted to be a better man, this was the moment to start.

He knelt on the floor beside her and put his hand on her. "Hermione..."

Another part of her skin marred now. This time with his blood- bright red streaks on the smooth peach of her shoulder.

With a whimper, she instantly sat up and scrambled away until her shoulders banged into the cabinets on the other side of the kitchen. She winced in pain. It was like a shard of ice piercing his brain.

"Don't... _Don't touch me_!"

_Touch her, grab her, hurt her._

"Let me explain," he pleaded, his voice catching in his throat. He didn't try to go any closer to her, though. He didn't dare.

She stood up, grabbing onto the counter for support. She was shaking. "I don't want an explanation," her voice was getting firmer now, fear and sadness resolving into determination.

"Please-"

"Don't!" she shouted, pointing her wand at him, "We're done! This horrible, toxic _thing_ that we have, it's over."

He had expected it. For six months, he had waited every day for her to say those words to him. But that didn't make it easier to combat the hollow despair that slithered into his stomach when she said them out loud.

Please. Not now. I can't.

"Hermione, give me-"

"Give you _what_?!" she yelled, anger flashing in her dark honey eyes, "What more do you want from me?! I let you stay in my home when I had every logical reason to kill you as you stood. I have given you shelter and food for half a year. I have fought with my best friends for you. You don't deserve any of it! I have opened my home, my life, my _self_ to you in the hopes that, when you saw that there was nothing to fear, you would at least _attempt_ to do the same. But at every turn I have been met with your mistrust. You want my help, but you won't let me help you. And then, and then you kiss me and... and touch me and make me want you. I... I let myself trust you. I'm a fool! You've driven me insane. I am not myself around you. I have no control, no reason. I hate it!" she stopped, breathing hard.

Every word of it was true. And every word was like knife stabbing him in the stomach, chest, heart.

His mind was suddenly blank. He just stood there, frozen, hoping and praying that he would somehow find the words to make her understand. But words didn't come.

The silence stretched on. Minutes that felt like hours. The space between them wasn't more than a few feet, but it could have been a chasm that yawned as wide as the universe. Dark and hollow. Suffocating.

"Just leave, Draco." Her voice was soft now, almost forlorn. She looked away; her face a mask of carefully composed indifference.

Do something! Now!

_Make her scream for us, Draco. Hurt the bitch. You know you want to Draco._

Resisting, with superhuman effort, the urge to fall to his knees and just scream in despair and rage, he finally spoke, quietly but firmly, "No."

She didn't even look at him. He stood up and crossed the kitchen in a few strides until he was standing right in front of her. She looked at him with a strangely distant gaze, as if she had already cut herself off from him.

No. I won't let you give up on me.

"Use Leglimency. No defences this time. See it all. Everything."

It was his only hope, his prayer for redemption.

Just like last time, she didn't say anything. He saw the resolve form in the depths of her eyes, and his heart lifted just a little.

She walk forward and sat down on the mattress in that strange half-kneel that was her favourite sitting position and looked up at him expectantly. He sat down cross-legged opposite her and took in a steadying breath, knowing that he would need all the strength he could get for the ordeal that was to come.

"_Leglimens_"

* * *

**Note: **

Trouver- French word for 'find'

**Burn It Down - Linkin Park **

The cycle repeated  
As explosions broke in the sky  
All that I needed  
Was the one thing I couldn't find  
And you were there at the turn  
Waiting to let me know

We're building it up  
To break it back down  
We're building it up  
To burn it down  
We can't wait  
To burn it to the ground

The colors conflicted  
As the flames, climbed into the clouds  
I wanted to fix this  
But couldn't stop from tearing it down  
And you were there at the turn  
Caught in the burning glow  
And I was there at the turn  
Waiting to let you know

We're building it up  
To break it back down  
We're building it up  
To burn it down  
We can't wait  
To burn it to the ground

You told me yes  
You held me high  
And I believed when you told that lie  
I played soldier, you played king  
And struck me down, when I kissed that ring  
You lost that right, to hold that crown  
I built you up, but you let me down  
So when you fall, I'll take my turn  
And fan the flames  
As your blazes burn

And you were there at the turn  
Waiting to let me know

We're building it up  
To break it back down  
We're building it up  
To burn it down  
We can't wait  
To burn it to the ground

When you fall, I'll take my turn  
And fan the flames  
As your blazes burn

We can't wait  
To burn it to the ground

When you fall, I'll take my turn  
And fan the flames  
As your blazes burn

We can't wait  
To burn it to the ground


	5. Chapter 5

**AN: **This is a short one, I know. Sorry about that, the next chapter will be nice and long. And no Dramione. Don't throw things at me, there _is_ a plot to deal with, after all. Read and review like the angels that you are!

Song selection for this chapter - **Pyro by Kings of Leon **(ALL the lyrics don't fit, but most do. And the music is a perfect fit to the emotional tone of the chapter) Give it a listen and tell me what you think!

* * *

**No. 12 Grimmauld Place, while Draco was in the woods and Hermione was crying on the white mattress**

Ginny gasped as Harry licked his way up the long column of her creamy white neck.

"Godric's rod, baby, stop with the foreplay and _take my fucking pants off_!"

She felt his answering grin against her skin and scowled. And when, minutes later, he made no move to obey her desperate plea, her impatience ratcheted up a few more notches and she squirmed under him irritatedly. He did this to her often, kissing her and teasing her but holding off on the actual sex act until she was _panting_ with need and begging him repeatedly to do her into the mattress, or wall, or couch. It was safe to say that they had christened practically every inch of No. 12 Grimmauld Place many times over since Harry had moved in two years ago. It was the Living Room today; the soft, dark maroon woven carpet that she had bought for the room a few months ago had become one of their favourite spots for lovemaking.

The doorbell jangled suddenly, and Harry groaned. Convinced that the Fates were conspiring just to piss her off, she pushed Harry off her roughly, "That's what happens when you stall for so long, you prat. Go answer the door."

Harry jumped up, pulled on his jeans and smirked at her, "Don't be like that, sweetness, I was just playing. You know I like getting you all worked up. I'm sorry. No stalling next time, okay?"

She didn't smile back, still irritated. "We'll see if there even _is_ a next time."

Harry snorted as he walked to the door, shirtless, with his faded, blue Muggle jeans hanging deliciously low on his hips. She couldn't help the small smile that curved her lips as she traced the smooth lines of his back with her eyes and felt a frisson of heat race through her chest.

With them, there was _always_ a next time.

"What the _fuck_?"

Ginny was up and dragging her shirt on in a second. She raced down the ever-gloomy hallway and crashed into Harry, who was standing with both hands braced on the doorframe like he needed to support himself, in her hurry to see what or who it was.

Harry didn't even seem to notice her as she bounced off him and into the wall of the corridor with a small yell. He just stood there, staring out of the door like he was frozen.

"Harry, what is it? What's wrong?" she queried worriedly, peering out onto the front porch.

_What the fuck_ was right.

Made of an iridescent, silvery metal that looked more liquid than solid, the statue that was sitting on the front porch was one of the most eye-catching things Ginny had ever seen. It was a snake poised to strike, its body coiled sinuously, fangs bared and jaws wide open. The statue was a little more than two feet tall, and looked like it would have been more at home on the shelves of one of the expensive boutiques in Diagon Alley.

And then Ginny noticed its eyes and decided that even those high-end shops had never sold anything nearly as priceless. Maybe it would look more at home in some Pure-Blood-for-generations family's high-security Gringotts vault.

The eyes looked like diamonds, at least four inches in diameter, and they shattered the sunlight that glinted off them into a multitude of colours that were blindingly beautiful. Ginny tilted her head in different directions, feeling a curious joy in counting the number of different colours she could see by changing the angle that she viewed the diamonds at.

Yellow, Purple, Blue, Amber, Pink, Green, Turquoise, Indigo, Magenta.

Then, when she looked at the right eye dead in the centre, she gasped and peered closer. At this angle, the outer part of the diamond was transparent, so much so that she could see straight through into the core of the gorgeous jewel, the dark, blood-red core that was slowly pulsing and glowing.

Was it.._alive_?

With a squeeze of fear in her chest that she had learned to trust implicitly, Ginny decided that whatever it was and whoever had left it there, that thing was being disposed of immediately. She turned to Harry, "I don't like it," she said, her voice low because she was somehow convinced that the thing was darkly sentient and could hear her, "There's dark magic in it, Harry. I can _feel_ it. Can't you? Look at its _eyes_. We need to get rid of it."

"No."

He didn't even bother to look up from the damn statue and look at her face.

"What do you mean, 'no'?" she said, incredulously, "You don't even know who put it here! They could be... it might-"

"What, kill me in my sleep?" sarcasm crept into his voice as he turned and walked back into the house.

"Yes!" she followed him in, "It oozes evil. Godric knows why they want you to have it! The War is over, but there might still be some freaks out there who're looking to do you in! You were just telling me last week that Zabini uncovered an underground cult of Voldy-fanatics in Scotland and arrested the lot of them! How do you know-"

"I don't know. And that's why I'm not going to get rid of it. I want to find out."

"Stop interrupting me, Harry! Why are you being so stupid? Call the Ministry and have them take a look at it! What do you know about dark magic?" she yelled angrily.

He was in the Living Room, directing the furniture around the room with his wand to make an empty space in the far corner, presumably to put the statue there. He turned as she finished her mini-rant and her heart nearly stopped. He was _furious_.

"What do _I_ know?" he hissed, stalking closer to her.

For all the times that Ginny had wondered how her sweet, gentle boyfriend had killed the Darkest Wizard of All Time, it was rare moments like this that answered: because he was one of the most powerful wizards she had ever seen. His magical aura crackled with raw energy. It shone behind his eyes- a darker, deeper green that swirled through the normal emerald, and sparked out into the air around him in tiny, bluish flashes- a sight that was both astounding and terrifying. It only ever happened when he was enraged, and he had only ever been enraged in her presence, the way he was now, twice before.

The first time was two months after the War, when he'd been informed that the Ministry had sanctioned the slaughter of the Death-Eater Selwyn's entire family after they'd been hunted out from their month-long hiding, including his three-year old son.

The second time had been only a few months ago, in February, the Mudblood Incident with Malfoy.

She had been blown away both those times, and this time she found herself stifling a yelp of fear. Because it was the first time that he had ever turned it on her.

But she didn't understand _why_. What was _wrong_ with him?

She fought the urge to back away. This was _Harry_. She didn't have a reason to be afraid. He'd never hurt her.

But then why was his hand trembling around his wand like that? Why was his jaw clenched and taut, a muscle in his cheek ticking erratically? Why was he still closing in on her? Why was her instinct, the one that she never ignored, telling her, screaming at her- _Run_.

He stepped closer, eerily bright, green eyes boring into hers, "This is _my_ house. That snake was left here for _me_. This is _my_ decision. And you," he stopped when he had closed the distance between them enough for the power rolling off him to actually touch her, like small jolts of electricity on her skin, "don't have a say."

Angry tears sprang to Ginny's eyes. Harry had always listened to her, always valued her opinion. She had always believed that he truly respected what she had to say. But now her insecurities whispered viciously that he had just been tolerating her inputs about his decisions, that he had allowed her to change the furniture around and put in new carpets and sheets and cutlery not because he wanted it too, but because he was just putting up with her unthinking intrusions into his life. Ginny knew she wasn't as smart as Hermione, whom both Harry and her brother regarded with a kind of adoration that had incited jealousy in her more times than she was comfortable admitting to, but she had never expected that Harry would ever exclude her so completely from anything that had to do with him.

Blinking away the moisture from her eyes, Ginny turned and walked away without another word or a backward glance. When she reached the front door, she prayed with all her heart that the porch would be empty. But the statue was still there, right where they'd found it, jewel eyes glinting ominously.

She stopped in front of it, sudden indecision rooting her to the spot.

Harry had made it crystal clear that he didn't care what she thought anymore. And he obviously fully intended to put the statue in his house and try and reveal its secrets.

But the thing was dangerous. She just _knew_ that whoever had left it there had not done so with good intentions. Just when everything had settled down and peace had finally found a seemingly permanent place in their lives, there was no secret that the statue could possibly possess, no mystery that it could help solve, that was worth risking that peace that they had all fought so hard to gain. She should destroy it. Harry was being uncharacteristically irrational, but he would see sense eventually. Until then, let him be angry with her. She'd face the consequences later.

Ginny whipped out her wand, deciding to use _Specialis Revelio_ first, even though she knew that the spell would just prove her right. When it did, she could use her specialty, a _Reducto_, on it with a clear conscience.

And then her wand flew out of her hand.

Harry was standing just inside the door, his wand outstretched. He was no longer enraged, that much was obvious. His eyes were back to normal and his aura was no longer sparking with power. But his face was still set in hard lines.

"You... you _Disarmed_ me?!" Ginny whispered, unable to contain her shock. What _was it_ about this fucking statue?

Again, he didn't even bother to look at her, his eyes riveted on the statue instead.

"Just go, Ginny." His voice was flat, but the words struck like a whip.

She Accio'd her wand and Disapparated on the spot. The last thing she saw before she entered the constricting darkness was Harry crouch down and run his hand over the snake's silvery head, gently. Lovingly.

* * *

**Pyro - Kings of Leon**

A single book of matches  
Gonna burn what's standing in the way  
Running down the mountain  
Now they're calling on the fire brigade

Carry out the pictures  
And tell the kids that I'm okay  
If'n I'm forgotten  
You'll remember me 'fore today

I, I won't ever be your cornerstone

All the black inside me  
Is slowly seeping from the bone  
Everything I cherish  
Is slowly dying, or it's gone

Little shaking babies  
And drunkards seem to all agree  
Once the show gets started  
It's bound to be a sight to see

I, I won't ever be your cornerstone  
I, I don't wanna be here holding on  
I, I won't ever be your cornerstone

Watch her run  
Can you feel it?  
Watch her run  
Can you feel it?

Watch her run  
Can you feel it?  
Watch her run  
Can you feel it?

I, I won't ever be your cornerstone  
I, I don't wanna be here holding on  
I, I won't ever be your cornerstone


	6. Chapter 6

**AN:** I know it's been forever and a day. I'm sorry, lovelies. I hope you like this one. It's long. It's angst-y. It's complicated. Thank you for reviewing and favouriting and alerting. Have lots of cookies.

I received an anonymous review that called me out on my use of song lyrics to 'fill out' my chapters. I assure you I am doing no such thing. Some chapters are long, some aren't. That is that. And music is a humungous part of my life. The lyrics of the songs that I recommend for each chapter inspire me. That is why I include the lyrics.

Song rec for this chapter- **The Broken Ones - Dia Frampton**

Please please review. Tell me what you think. Tell me what you like, hate, what you want to read in future chapters and what you don't.

**Warning: **This chapter contains graphic violence. DO NOT READ if that is going to affect or offend you in any way.

* * *

**No. 12 Grimmauld Place, the present**

Harry didn't notice the anguished glance that Ginny directed at him before she Disapparated because he was already falling to his knees in front of the silver statue. He stared it right in its eerie, scarlet eyes, vaguely realizing that his hand was languidly stroking the snake's smooth, cold head.

**_"What do you want? Who put you here?" _**he thought at it.

There was no response. The snake didn't speak.

But it _had_. He'd heard it! Even before he'd opened the door to see it sitting on the front porch for the first time, he had distinctly heard a faint voice. He'd thought then that whoever had rung the doorbell was speaking to him, and his or her voice was muffled through the thick, wooden door. But when he opened it and all he saw was a darkly beautiful silver statue, and still the quiet voice spoke on, he'd been floored. _"What the _fuck_?"_

His post-War reflexes and the skills he'd picked up in the Special Auror-training he'd been in for the past year should have kicked in. His common sense should have spoken up. He should have just shut the door, turned around and walked back into to the house, into the arms of his girlfriend, and ignored the voice.

**_"take me keep me want me"_**

It repeated itself, over and over again, a mantra that spun around and around in his brain until he was transfixed. He recognized the tell-tale hissing undertone, one that he hadn't heard in over two years, with a horrible twisting in his stomach.

Parseltongue.

_It doesn't make any sense! I can't speak it anymore. I... shouldn't be able to. And it's not even a real snake! How is it talking to me?_

Harry stared at the thing for what seemed like hours, confusion and fear racing through his veins and freezing him to the spot.

**_"take me keep me want me"_**

Godric's soul, he did!

_What is wrong with me?_

Ginny was falling into him, and then against the wall, and then she was standing beside him peering out at the thing. He heard her gasp, sharp in the silence, when she saw what he had already seen; its eyes were alive, glowing and pulsing like a heartbeat.

**"take me keep me ****_want me_****"**

The voice went on in a ceaseless litany.

And then she turned to him and said what he should have said when he first saw it. _"We need to get rid of it." _A queer sense of foreboding was building inside him, a dark weight on the back of his skull. He was sure, then, with every fibre of his being, that the snake had heard her.

As if it had read his mind, the hissing grew deeper, menacing. **"She will die."**

And then silence.

Pure terror shot through him so fast he was sure his heart would stop.

_Not again, not her. Please._

Ginny had been through so much because of him. She had given him so much, unquestioning, unselfish. He _would not_ allow her to be harmed again.

He knew what he had to do.

She'd never leave him, especially not when she thought he was in danger, like she did now.

Unless he hurt her.

And so he had. He had ignored her pleas to get rid of the statue, walked away and gone back into the house, afraid to look her in the eyes because she would know he was lying. She would know he was frightened out of his mind.

She followed him in, like he knew she would, and he had taken the few spare minutes before he had to what needed to be done to work himself up. He let the anger that someone, some fucking _bastard_, was trying to ruin the happiness that he had finally begun to trust in, flow through him. He let his fear for the safety of the love of his life take over his mind. He let the unfairness of it all, of fighting and bleeding and dying and losing so many loved ones in the War against Evil, only to be ambushed by it later when he had finally, _finally_ attained some semblance of normalcy, overwhelm him. And he felt it begin to build inside his chest and at the base of his spine- an electric heat, a tidal wave of raw power that surged through his body and out through his skin. His vision brightened until everything was highly coloured and in sharper focus than should have been possible for human eyes, his muscles expanded and clenched, his pulse raced.

He hated how much he loved this feeling. He felt _strong_.

But even in this state, when he felt as close to unbreakable as he could possibly feel, when he had to use all his heightened mental faculties to control the energy thrilling through him to keep himself in control, he could feel his heart breaking. It shattered, like the fine crystal goblet he had exploded by just looking at it from across the room, right out of Draco Malfoy's hand, in February, the last time he had allowed the power to overcome him.

_You have to do it. She deserves to be safe. She deserves goodness. _

He had turned on her. He had terrorized her. And he had lied.

He chose his words well, knowing just which insecurity of hers to prey on.

Harry had always known that Ginny was a little envious of Hermione and how much he and Ron relied on her for advice. He had seen how her face lit up when he had given her free reign of the house, how she had literally bounced around with excitement for a week, buying new rugs, plates, cups, sheets, curtains. He didn't try to analyze it then, but he knew what the underlying feeling was, Ginny wanted to be reassured that she _belonged_.

In his house, in his bed, in his life.

She worried that he didn't need her, that he didn't value her opinion. The only girl in a raucous family with so many older brothers, she was used to being drowned out and sidelined. But with Harry, she didn't want to be, and was always afraid that she would be.

So, in four short sentences, he dragged out that fear and twisted it. And he watched as she broke.

_You don't have a say_.

Her eyes welled up. They were mere inches from his own, golden pools of honey that he could drown in, had drowned in countless times. Her mouth trembled. She hunched slightly, as if she had been delivered a physical blow to the stomach, fiery of strands of silk falling off her shoulders to hang on either side of her face. Her fingers caught the hem of her dark blue shirt and twisted the material convulsively. The motion resonated with him; this was what he was doing to her.

Harry watched Ginny fall apart, and let it kill him, his punishment for what he was doing to her. The power racing through his veins began to recede, unable to remain under the onslaught of emotion.

He followed her as she walked out of the house, knowing the he should just let her go, but unable to give up a last glance at her before she left. Who knew when he would see her again?

He saw her hesitate when she walked past the statue. He could almost hear the thoughts whirring in her mind. She was going to destroy it.

_Let her. _

Maybe it was this easy. Maybe it would just collapse into dust and then he could stop her from leaving, explain and beg for forgiveness.

**"She will die."**

_NO._

His non-verbal Disarming spell had left his wand almost before he decided upon it. He had _never_ raised his wand at her. He kept his gaze downcast, knowing that he did not have the strength to see the hurt and shock in her eyes.

Now Ginny had gone, and he was left with this _thing_ that felt so evil it made him want to throw up.

The thing hadn't answered his thoughts. He tried speaking to it out loud; hoping desperately that his voice would come out sounding normal and he would just be a fool talking to an inanimate object.

But it didn't. The cursed language poured from his throat effortlessly:

**"What do you want?"**

**"Who put you here?"**

**"Why is this happening?"**

**"Answer me!"**

Had he imagined it all? Was he finally going starkers, like The Prophet had predicted he would two years ago?

Harry sighed and stood up, wiping the sweat that had formed on his brow with the intensity of his concentration on the snake. He couldn't have imagined it. And its eyes were still doing that weird pulsing thing. And he could still _speak fucking Parseltongue_.

_Help._

He decided to call Hermione. She'd have at least an inkling of what he should do.

**"I am yours none others' they will ALL DIE. TAKE ME KEEP ME WANT ME"**

"FUCK!" Harry raised his wand. He would destroy it then, turn it into dust. What was the worst that could happen?

But he couldn't do it.

He frowned and tried again, and still the spell refused to flow through his wand.

The weight on the nape of his neck was growing heavier and a strange iciness trickled through his chest.

**"Take me keep me want me"**

He realized something then with a bolt of fear- he would have Disarmed Ginny even if the snake hadn't threatened her.

"_Wingardium Leviosa_"

He levitated the statue through the doorway and into the Living Room, placing it in the far corner. His scalp crawled with disgust. He'd let Evil into his home; he was sure of it. But something else in his body, a tension that he hadn't acknowledged until now, eased the minute the statue was through his doorway. An odd relief was coursing through him even as his stomach roiled with fear.

Harry sat down in front of the snake cross-legged, his mind racing.

_What to do what to do_

The iciness in his chest reminded him of Dementors. But that didn't make any sense.

Anybody who helped him would be exposed to whatever the dark presence was that resided inside the thing. He couldn't allow it. Gone were the days when Harry Potter allowed anybody else to be hurt and killed for him.

The pressure on the back of his skull moved to his eyelids, forcing them to close like the world's fastest sleeping draught. Behind his closed lids, a diffused red light pulsed slowly, in time to some alien heartbeat.

Within seconds, Harry was curled up on the floor and falling asleep rapidly.

Just before his conscious mind shut down completely, he heard the weird hissing whisper again. His eyes would have snapped up if they could have, but all he could do was sigh and let the sleep overcome him while the statue hissed on.

**_"A shard of another's become your own. Removed. Torn. Lost. A hole, an emptiness. Unhealing wound. Unfading scar. Invisible traces. Shrouded in brightest light hides the dark"_**

**Hermione's cottage, the present**

"_Leglimens_"

Hermione fell through twin pools of silver into what seemed like a limitless, cavernous space. There were no distinguishable features, no sound, no colour, nothing. She felt weightless, but was sure that she was standing in this space rather than floating.

His mind is...empty?

The last time she had entered Draco's mind, it had been easy. The memories from his horrifying ordeal had been fresh in his mind, already playing over and over again. All she'd had to do was let them suck her in and carry her with them, and she was sure to not go further back than six hours. She couldn't have even if she'd wanted to, the moment she reached the six hour mark, a vast, dark something blocked her completely. It was impenetrable and immovable. Draco's mental defences were unbelievably strong.

She had never seen anything more terrifying than that glimpse into Draco's life.

...

She found herself to be standing in a large, darkened room. It was furnished lavishly. A carved wooden bookcase lined the far wall; its dark, varnished surfaces glowing warmly even in the dim light. It was stuffed with books, stacked untidily, shoved into any empty space available.

There was an ornate king-sized bed in the centre of the room; its wrought-iron framework was impressive. The headboard was a rearing dragon made out of the same wrought-iron. But it was filthy. The rumpled sheets, which had probably been either a dark navy blue or jet black when they were clean, were mottled and greyish. There were no pillows, and the mattress looked almost flat in the middle. There was a small chest of drawers beside the bed, but even without going closer she could make out the thick layer of dust covering its surface.

Behind the bed, on the wall adjacent to the bookcase, was a huge cathedral window. Hermione fought the urge to go over and open the heavy, royal blue velvet drapes and let some light into the dank, depressing room, knowing that she couldn't influence anything around her no matter how much she wanted to because it was just a memory. The only light came from a single torch burning in a bracket mounted on the wall that she was standing against. And in the flickering light of the torch, the room seemed empty.

_But that's not possible. He had to have been here for me to be in it now._

She walked around the bed slowly, noting the silvery threads woven into the emerald-green carpet that covered the floor. _Talk about extravagant._ Only few carpets of this kind existed in the world. They had been woven hundreds of years ago, before the use of Unicorn hair had been restricted by the Ministry. Even when they were first made, they had been expensive. Now, they were priceless.

_Where are you, Malfoy?_

Hermione completed an entire circuit of the room and found no one. It didn't make any sense. The extravagant room in disrepair, the dust covering everything, the dim lighting. This was Malfoy's bedroom, she was sure of it. There was a Nimbus 2001 standing beside a Firebolt Two in a medium sized showcase beside the bed that also contained the Hand of Glory. That was evidence enough. But the room looked like it hadn't been cleaned in months. No self-respecting House-Elf would leave a room in this state.

_Unless they've been ordered not to enter it._

A chill raked her scalp.

The sound of a key turning in the door behind her made her jump and yelp.

_The door is kept locked? What the fuck?_

Narcissa Malfoy let herself into the room and locked the door from the inside with uncanny speed. Her fingers shook as she slipped the key down the front of her robes and strode over to the closet that stood beside another door that Hermione had assumed led to the bathroom. Hermione could make out the angular shapes of her shoulder bones through her robes. She was emaciated. Her fine, platinum blonde hair had thinned out and hung in straggly clumps down her back.

Narcissa stood in front of the closet and stilled for a moment. Long enough for Hermione to make out the expression on her face- gone was the look of arrogant disdain that had been a permanent fixture on this once-beautiful, aristocratic face. Her eyes were dull, her trembling mouth bracketed by deep lines. She looked...hollow.

Unable to look at Narcissa any longer, Hermione turned to look at the closet that she had missed out during her inspection of the room. She was grateful that nobody could see or hear her, because the scream that ripped through her throat at that instant was ear-splitting. The closet doors weren't fully closed. And through the crack, Hermione saw Draco Malfoy. He was curled up inside the closet, knees up to his chest, arms around his knees, eyes wide open and staring through the crack.

It was his eyes that had made her scream. They bored into hers with a burning intensity and for a second she forgot that he couldn't see her. Her heart clenched with a strange mixture of sadness and confusion. The stormy, glimmering grey that she remembered, that they had been just now when he'd been sitting before her in her living room with that ridiculous smile on his face, was dull and hard.

Narcissa reached for the closet door handle, her haggard face set in an expression of fearsome determination, and wrenched the doors open.

Hermione didn't expect the scars to affect her. She'd already seen and been utterly revolted by them when she was casting Healing Charm after Healing Charm and practically dousing him in Dittany while he lay on her couch.

The ones on his arms and shins were visible in this semi-foetal position; the wounds on his back and chest were hidden. They crawled up his arms grotesquely, some ropy with scar tissue, some scabbed over, some were more recent- reddish-pink and raw, surrounded by purplish bruises. His legs told the same traumatic story.

But his shins took her by surprise. They'd been almost fully healed when she'd seen them. But now, several hours earlier, they were _mangled_. It looked like someone had taken a cheese-grater to them repeatedly. All that was left was glistening, naked flesh covered by bloody threads of skin. Hermione found herself swallowing back the rising bile in her throat.

Looking at him in this state, here in this depressing room, his starved, folded-in form hidden inside this closet, she felt her skin crawl violently.

Narcissa stooped down and wrapped her arms around her son.

Malfoy's breathing had been almost imperceptible until then. But the moment his mother's hands came into contact with him, his breath began to hitch and break loudly. He sat up with a low, agonized cry, struggling slightly in her embrace. Tears dripped down his hollow cheeks, following tracks that seemed permanently etched there.

Narcissa manoeuvred him out of the closet gently until he was sitting on the floor. She sat beside him, her arms still around him.

"Shh. I'm here," she whispered. He swallowed heavily, closed his eyes and clenched his hands in his lap. Hermione watched his hands, the grazes on the knuckles, and the dirt under the cracked fingernails. They twitched involuntarily every few seconds, as did his feet. She'd read about it extensively- the symptoms of prolonged exposure to the Cruciatus Curse.

The torture that had been carried out on the rest of his body was visible now. All he was wearing was a pair of frayed, black boxers. Hermione'd already suspected that he'd been subjected to a Sectumsempra-like curse several times, and at least once recently by the look of some of the just-clotting gashes that criss-crossed his abdomen and chest.

When she'd come across it during her inspection of Draco after she'd found him outside her cottage door, the deep-tissue bruising on his stomach and shoulders had sent her running to consult one of her books on Magical Healing to find a charm that would work on internal wounds and possible internal bleeding. She'd found a complicated spell that involved a small transfer of energy from the spell-caster to the patient, to aid in the healing process the book said.

She'd cast the spell thrice, and covered up the resulting exhaustion that had made her hands tremble and her muscles ache by sheer force of will so that she looked as in-control as she had when he'd finally woken up.

The book had also given her a spell to diagnose the number and severity of fractures in a particular part of the body.

She'd passed her wand over him and muttered the incantation, her heart clenching tighter and tighter as the little ball of light pulsed orange once, twice...nine times collectively over his limbs. These were healed fractures- both kneecaps, the two bones of his right forearm and all the fingers of the same hand. The light had pulsed scarlet twice over the ribs of his right side and once over his left arm- fresh or healing fractures. She'd been unable to heal these, resorting to binding up his left arm and to a strong numbing spell that she first cast on his ribs and then over his whole body for good measure.

His back was in a condition similar to his shins. From the length and shape of the cuts, Hermione'd suspected some type of magical flogging.

_How does a body withstand this level of wounding?_

The most chilling thing about Malfoy's body wasn't the scars and wounds themselves. It wasn't the incomprehensible amount of blood he must have lost over the duration of his torture. It wasn't even the evidence from the fractures and healed wounds that he'd been tortured continuously for at least a year.

No. Hermione's blood had run ice cold when she saw the way so many of the healed cuts had knitted together. Only magical healing could do that.

_Somebody's been healing him. _

Like a painter whitewashing his canvas so he could start over, Malfoy had been healed over and over just to be subjected to the same ordeal again.

As if in harmony with Hermione's thoughts, Narcissa turned to Malfoy just then and put a glass of water that she'd just conjured to his lips. He drank slowly. When he was done, she helped him to the bed, and once he was sitting on the sagging mattress, extended her wand and proceeded to heal all the open wounds on his body, passing her wand over his shins and back repeatedly.

_She's healing him...and Lucius is hurting him? His own son?_

The strangest thing about the whole scene was how practised it looked. Like it was a daily routine.

_Maybe it is._

The idea was horrifying.

Narcissa conjured a clean white shirt and black pants. She sat beside Malfoy on the bed as he struggled into the clothes, wincing slightly.

"You should go," Malfoy croaked softly, "he'll come. He'll see you in here."

She smoothed his matted hair back gently, a sad smile on her face. "He hasn't for a year. Why should today be any different?"

She placed a skeletal hand on his waxy cheek and he leaned his face into it with a sigh.

"I just... I worry."

Tears began to course down Narcissa's face. She smiled that same sad smile again, "As do I, for you, my darling boy. But what do I always say? We will endure. Somehow. We _are _Malfoys, after all."

Malfoy snorted softly and the sound was so like him, the him that Hermione remembered from school, that she smiled in spite of the tears welling in her own eyes as she watched the exchange between mother and son.

"Don't forget to-"

"Get rid of the clothes as soon as I wake up. You'll conjure me new ones tomorrow night. I know, mother."

Narcissa smoothed out the rumpled sheets on the bed and her face fell. "I'm so-"

"Sorry that you can't conjure me new sheets and bedding, because he'll notice. I _know_, mother. Must we go over this every night? You do your best." Malfoy was smiling at her now.

"Sweet boy," Narcissa said, and her eyes brightened suddenly, "I have a surprise for you." She drew a wand out from the pocket of her robes.

His gasp was sharp in the silence. "My wand! How did you..."

"You underestimate your old mum," she said, her face splitting in a wide smile that suddenly made her look almost as beautiful as she once was.

Malfoy ran his hands over his wand in a slow caress. And then he suddenly gripped it tightly. Silver sparks shot out of the end.

"I'm going to kill him."

His voice was hard and flat, and stronger than it had been all this while.

"Now now, all in good time. He's still strong, and you've never been weaker. I promise, Draco, when the time comes, it will be your wand to fell him. _I will ensure it._" Narcissa's eyes gleamed, and Hermione finally saw a resemblance between her and her cousin Sirius. That same spark, that same determination.

"Sleep now. And for the love of Salazar, hide your wand properly."

With a reluctant sigh, Malfoy lay down. "I will hold you to your promise, mother. He may break my body. But he will _never _break _me_."

"I know, darling. I know." Narcissa's face shone with love and pride for her son.

Hermione'd felt a surge of admiration for Draco Malfoy. He was stronger and braver than she had ever given him credit for, by far.

She had always assumed that Narcissa was as removed and aloof in her mothering as she appeared to be in her interactions with everybody else. She had always come across as haughty and arrogant, and on some level Hermione had blamed her for Malfoy's flaws almost as much as she blamed his father for teaching him to follow his insane world-view. But now, her heart softened as she watched Narcissa do her best to dust the sheet and plump the mattress. She covered Malfoy with another sheet, dropping a kiss on his forehead as she did so.

"One day at a time, Draco dear. One day at a time. We'll survive this, I promise."

Nothing was more obvious to Hermione than the fact that in spite of the terror and the pain, or maybe in a way because of it, there was an extremely strong, loving bond between the mother and son before her.

_"BOMBARDA!" _

The door to Malfoy's room was blasted off its hinges with a bang, and Narcissa jumped up and away from her son like she'd been caught committing a crime.

"Liars. Traitors. BETRAYED. ALWAYS BETRAYED!" Lucius bellowed. Hermione was thought of how unkempt and haggard Xenophilius Lovegood had looked when she, Harry and Ron had turned up at his house during their search for the Horcruxes. For some reason, after seeing the way Narcissa looked now and the pitiful condition of Draco and his room, she had expected Lucius to look like he had gone to seed, too, the way Xenophilius had when Luna had been kidnapped.

But he looked immaculate.

He looked even better than he had in the days leading up to Voldemort's defeat. He'd looked sallow and sickly then, evidence of the constant stress he'd been enduring under Voldemort's thumb. His hair was neatly swept up and away from his angular brow. His face was clean and only mildly lined. His heavy robes were deep purple and spangled with gold. He even wore a sparkling gold ring on his finger.

Hermione'd racked her brain trying to understand how he had the money to maintain himself in this manner. The Malfoys' Gringott's account had been frozen and Lucius had been put under house-arrest immediately after the fall of Voldemort. He was given a meager monthly stipend; just enough to feed himself (his wife and son were presumed to have fled to America or other parts of Europe. They hadn't been placed under house arrest because they had been cleared of all suspicion thanks to Harry's testimony), and all the interactions with the world outside the walls of Malfoy Manor such as the buying of food was carried out through their House-Elf, who was required to submit to monthly interrogations by a Ministry official. The only reason Lucius and his wife and son hadn't been rounded up along with the other surviving Death-Eaters was because Harry had fought the Ministry tooth-and-nail for a month and testified repeatedly that they had defected just before the Final Battle, Narcissa in particular.

_He must have an alternate source of income. But the Ministry wouldn't allow that. Then how-_

Her thoughts had been interrupted by Lucius pointing his wand at Narcissa, an unholy glint in his crazed eyes, and smiling as she was lifted off her feet and thrown against the bookcase with a loud crash. The strangest thing about it was that it was carried out in complete silence, which was so at odds with the way Lucius had entered the room a few minutes ago.

Draco was sitting up on his bed, his upper body straining forward towards the crumpled form of his mother on the floor, but he didn't move or make a sound. Neither had Narcissa, not a single cry even as her skull had crashed against a shelf, even as she slid down onto the floor in a heap.

Lucius stalked around Draco's bed, ignoring him as if he was invisible, and approached his wife. "Traitorous bitch. Teach her to go behind my back...Teach her a lesson...Wake up and face me!" He pointed his wand at her and she roused, sitting up slowly with a wince. She kept her eyes downcast.

"Kneel," Lucius commanded. Her eyes flashed up to his, terror stark on her face. "Do it, bitch," he hissed, turning slightly and pointing his wand at Draco. Hermione felt another surge of admiration when she saw how Draco merely straightened his spine and stared back at his father. Immediately, Narcissa obeyed.

Lucius snickered, an evil sound. "So much love for your worm of a son." Narcissa didn't reply. Hermione saw Draco's jaw clench.

"How much do you love him, bitch?"

Again, Narcissa did not move or speak.

"Answer me!" he screeched, pointing his wand at her. Now Narcissa made a sound.

She screamed.

Ear-splitting. Bloodcurdling. Her back bowed under the weight of the Curse and she was lying on the floor, her limbs jerking and twitching. And she never stopped screaming.

Draco was whimpering. His hands were clamped over his ears and he was rocking back and forth.

It might have been an hour or ten minutes, but the time that it seemed that Hermione spent watching Narcissa scream as her husband Crucio'd her and cackled madly stretched on for an eternity.

"MASTER GIVE ME STRENGTH," Lucius yelled, and extended his wand further. It didn't seem possible, but Narcissa's screaming got louder. Her back arched so sharply it looked like she would break in two, and then she was levitating a few inches off the floor by the sheer strength of the Curse.

Hermione was kneeling on the floor beside Draco's bed with her hands over her ears by then, and Draco was curled into a ball, sobbing.

"Please. _Please stop._" Hermione cried, unable to help herself.

And then, it stopped.

He couldn't have heard her.

Hermione looked up and saw Draco standing up, facing Lucius and pointing his wand at him. Narcissa was on her back on the floor, her face smeared red with blood that still oozed from where she'd bitten through her lower lip. A sharp tang in the air told Hermione that Narcissa's bladder had let go at some point during the ordeal.

"Found your wand, did you, maggot?" Lucius said quietly, his eyes sparkling with eerie enthusiasm.

Draco merely gripped his wand tighter. But even Hermione could see the way his legs were wobbling. He was dangerously weak, and Lucius knew it.

"Go on then, _son_," Lucius twisted the word, "Do something. Protect your beloved mother. Hurt me like I have you for so long."

"_Crucio!_"

With a lazy flick of his wand, Lucius deflected it. "It does not suffice to simply want to cast an Unforgivable, boy. You must _feel_ it. You are weak. You always were. Disgusting little worm. You are no match for me."

Frustration broke through the carefully constructed blank expression on Draco's face now. Sweat beaded his brow.

He flicked his gaze down to Narcissa, and Hermione recognized a split-second widening of his eyes before he looked back up at his father. Standing up, she peered over the side of the bed, and saw that Narcissa was awake, and her wand was in her hand.

Lucius hadn't noticed. His cruel, over-bright gaze was still focussed on his son.

"_Imperio!_"

Immediately, Draco's face relaxed and his eyes dulled. He was obviously too weak to fight off the Curse. An unholy smile spread slowly across Lucius' face. Hermione's fists clenched in harmony.

Lucius flicked his wand, and Draco began walking, around the bed, out of the room. Hermione followed, her mind reeling.

Draco stopped at the top of the staircase that swept downward to the Living Room below. There was something odd about his posture. His upper body slanted forward slightly, his arms held away from his body, like a bird about to take flight.

Or, like he was about to- _no no NO!_

He launched himself off the top step gracefully, like a ballet dancer leaping onto stage. His face was still dull and lifeless. And then his body hit the stairway almost a third of the way down with a sickening crunch that Hermione felt to her stomach. He rolled the rest of the way down, the thuds of his body striking the steps pounding in her ears. He stopped at the bottom of the stairs, his body crumpled, and his left arm strangely askew. It was a wonder he hadn't broken his neck.

Hermione raced down the stairs, nearly blinded by her tears, and fell to her knees beside Draco. He was awake, miraculously, but his eyes still stared blankly ahead.

Lucius was laughing. Loudly. Hysterically.

He flicked his wand at Draco and began to descend the stairs. Draco stood up, his left arm hanging in a horribly loose manner.

"Do something, worm," Lucius jeered, "You can't, can you? You're not even _trying_ to fight me off. Lazy. Worthless. So what shall we make the worm do next? Hmm?" He was circling Draco's still form now, that smile still playing on his thin, pale lips.

"Shall we...make him hurt himself?"

Flick.

Draco's right hand lifted and clutched his left arm. And wrenched it downward. Draco screamed loudly.

"Shall we put his wand, which has been so kindly returned to him by his useless mother, to some use?"

Flick.

Draco pointed his wand at himself and sliced it through the air above his shoulder. Bright red stains soaked through the white shirt alarmingly quickly. He screamed again, his voice cracked and rough, tendons in his neck sticking out.

Flick.

Another slice, making an X. More blood, so much blood, spilling through the shirt and dripping onto the stone floor. Sweat pouring off his brow. Shriller cries of agony.

Flick.

Flick.

Flick.

Hermione's eyes had glazed over. She could no longer focus on the horror playing out in front of her. Draco's screams seemed far away now. She squeezed her eyes shut, and tried to will herself out of Draco's mind. She'd seen enough.

But she couldn't leave.

She opened her eyes. Draco was on the floor. His blood was pooling around him, congealing to a dark red-black. His eyes were no longer dull, though. Lucius had lifted the Imperius.

"See. Do you see, boy? I have freed you, and still you cannot raise your wand against me. From the day you were born from your mother's accursed womb I knew you were unworthy. You are the lead weight around my neck, dragging me to the depths of ruin. You are the reason my Master left me, _you_!" Lucius was screaming, madness clearly written on his face.

"MASTER! Come back to me! See how I carry on what you taught me. See how I make the blood-traitors and the weaklings suffer. I will give you anything, my self, my life, my only son. Is that what you need, to come back? A sacrifice? Take him, My Lord! He is yours! We are yours!"

Despite the knowledge that Draco had survived this, Hermione could not stop herself from screaming her throat raw as Lucius pointed his wand at his son, still yelling for Voldemort to come back to him.

"Here, My Lord. My sacrifice. My offering to you. Take him!" Lucius screamed.

"_Avada Kedavra!_"

A bright green jet of light burst from the end of Lucius's wand. Draco did not stir. He didn't even look up. A sudden pop of Apparition. Narcissa appeared in front of Draco's body, her arms thrown out in a gesture of protection. Hermione wanted to look away. She did not want to see this. But she acknowledged that a part of her was violently glad that it wasn't Draco that the Avada would hit.

In that last instant of her life, her ravaged face lit by the green light of the Killing Curse, Narcissa smiled.

...

Now, Hermione was inside Draco's mind for a second time in an effort to understand why he had attacked her. There had been a blackness in his eyes as he had hurt her, an evil presence that reminded her all too chillingly of the look in his father's eyes as he had tortured his wife and son.

But there were no memories here. No thought. Nothing.

_Help me out a little here, Draco_.

Suddenly, a wide river of blurred colours swept in out of nowhere and began to rush past her. It looped, spun, zoomed around and over her. Screaming. Mind-boggling.

She recognized it for what it was- memories. Thousands of them, all merged into one never-ending, deafening ribbon of thought.

But she had never read about this kind of thing. She had never learned how to extract coherence from a truly fractured mind.

An upwelling of grief for the level of trauma that this man had withstood nearly brought Hermione to her knees. She put her hands over her ears and closed her eyes. This was more terrifying by far than what she had seen the previous time she had performed Leglimency on Draco. This was proof, gut-wrenching proof, that Draco was damaged. Possibly beyond repair.

With superhuman effort Hermione pulled herself out of Draco's mind. There was no way she could withstand that onslaught. She'd find another way to figure him out. Maybe Veritaserum.

Somehow they had ended up nose to nose again.

This..this was the most terrifying thing of all. That even though she had just experienced how broken the man sitting before her was, even though there were just-blooming bruises in her body that had been caused by his hands, she _wanted_ him. And she wanted to fix him. She believed she could save him.

Hermione blinked away the tears of sheer emotion as she struggled to control the maelstrom whirling within her.

Like he had read her mind, Draco's lips were suddenly on hers, his hands cupping her face.

All the emotion of the past few hours, all the fear, the heat, the desire, she put everything into this kiss.

He didn't try to take off her top, didn't try to do anything more than just kiss her till she was gasping for air, for more of him.

"You're broken," she whispered between pulls of his lips, "you're broken, but I will fix you."

His lips traveled to her neck. He traced the wounds that he had made. He kissed the bruises. "I'm sorry," he said, before sucking her lower lip between his teeth and running his tongue over it, "I'm so sorry."

An insistent buzzing broke through Hermione's haze. She jumped up immediately and made for the Living Room. She glanced back at Draco. He was sitting on the white mattress and leaning his head against the wall. His eyes were burning into her. She dragged her gaze away and headed towards the fireplace.

It was a firecall from Ginny. She was at The Burrow. She was crying.

* * *

**Lyrics - The Broken Ones by Dia Frampton**

I know they've hurt you bad.  
Wide, the scars you have.  
Baby let me straighten out your broken bones,  
All your faults to me make you more beautiful.

I can't help it,  
I love the broken ones,  
The ones who,  
Need the most patching up.  
The ones who've,  
Never been loved,  
Never been loved,  
Never been loved.  
And Oh maybe I see a part of me in them.  
The missing piece always trying to fit in.  
The shattered heart,  
Hungry for a home.  
No you're not alone,  
I love the broken ones.

You don't have to drive,  
With your headlights off.  
It's a pocketknife,  
Not a gift from god.  
Don't you learn of love from the love they kept.  
I will be your anchor slowly,  
Step by step.

I can't help it,  
I love the broken ones,  
The ones who,  
Need the most patching up.

The ones who've,  
Never been loved,  
Never been loved,  
Never been loved.  
And Oh maybe I see a part of me in them.  
The missing piece always trying to fit in.  
The shattered heart,  
Hungry for a home.  
No you're not alone,  
I love the broken ones.

Maybe we can rip off the bandage.  
Maybe you will see it for what it is.  
Maybe we can burn this building,  
Holding you in.

I can't help it,  
I love the broken ones,  
The ones who,  
Need the most patching up.  
The ones who've,  
Never been loved,  
Never been loved,  
Never been loved.  
And Oh maybe I see a part of me in them.  
The missing piece always trying to fit in.  
The shattered heart,  
Hungry for a home.  
No you're not alone,  
I love the broken ones.


	7. Chapter 7

**AN:** Here's the next chapter. Rejoice rejoice! Thank you for your response, lovelies.

This chapter took a lot out of me. I don't know why.

Anyway, tell me what you think.

Song for this chapter, particularly the last part, **Falling Apart by Zebrahead**.

* * *

**The Lion's Den, Muggle London, the present**

"Good evening, W."

"The usual, Mr. W?"

The tall, red-headed man in the fitted black blazer that accentuated his broad, muscled shoulders and blue jeans smiled at the bouncer and nodded at Jonas, the bartender. W was a regular at the Lion's Den, a hole-in-the-wall pub in Muggle London.

He'd been going there at least three nights a week for over six months. Some nights it seemed as if he went for the sole purpose of picking up a pretty girl for a one-night-stand. Some nights he just sat at the bar and drank for a few hours, keeping to himself and talking to nobody, and left.

Tonight was one of the former.

Jonas slid a glass tumbler of neat whiskey towards W, who had taken up his favourite stance- leaning against the bar with one hand shoved into the pocket of his jeans, and winked. Jonas knew that this would be one of _those_ nights when he saw that W had already begun to scan the bar and the crowded dance floor.

Watching him with the ladies was always entertaining.

W was very handsome, with piercing blue eyes that one of the besotted girls had called 'electrifying'.

He was also very mysterious. Everybody at the pub only knew him as 'W'. No first name or last name. When asked, he answered with small smile that made his eyes sparkle. Combined with his dark, brooding aura, the air of mystery did a lot to charm the girls off their feet and out of their clothes.

On rare nights when W was in a particularly good mood, he did magic tricks. He _always_ left with a girl on those nights. His tricks with playing cards and his specialty- making something, anything really, levitate a few inches off his palm- never failed to impress.

Only Jonas knew his secret.

Even squibs who had left the Wizarding World and integrated themselves fully into a muggle lifestyle knew who Voldemort was.

No matter how deeply they buried themselves under their chosen rocks of blissful ignorance, there wasn't a squib in all of London that couldn't recognize Ronald Weasley, one-third of the Golden Trio, when he walked into their bar.

But Jonas had kept mum. The only obvious reason for this man to choose to come to this place was the anonymity it afforded. Who was he to take that away from him?

W was draining his glass, his eyes fixed on somebody on the dance floor. Jonas followed his gaze.

Ah, he'd found one.

The girl that W was watching had come to the Den for every night for the past four nights. Jonas had never seen her before that. She was a stunner. Even Jonas, who was flamboyantly gay, had been a little enthralled by her beauty.

She had silky, jet-black hair that fell beyond her shoulder blades. Her eyes were a vivid yellow-green. They were wide and framed with thick, dark lashes, and gave her a feline aura that was accentuated by her body- lean and graceful. She had worn a different miniskirt every night that she had come. Tonight it was a floaty, dark maroon skirt that ended just past mid-thigh and moved with her flirtily as she danced. She had killer legs, long and toned, and her sky-high stiletto ankle boots just added to the effect. Her corset top was cream with dull gold swirls on the front. It showed off her shoulders and accentuated her slim waist offset against the curves of her breasts and hips.

'This girl could turn me straight,' Jonas thought wryly.

She was dancing alone, and there wasn't a man in the room who hadn't ogled her at least a few times. She danced like a dream, sexy legs and swaying hips. She flipped her hair and looked around the darkened pub. Jonas was suddenly sure that she was extremely aware of how beautiful she was, and she wasn't going to apologize for it.

She noticed that W was watching her. He met her gaze head on, smiled lightly, nodded once and raised his drink. _Cheers, beautiful._

Jonas waited for her to react the way they all did- a quick lowering of the eyes, a giggle, a blush, and then they'd make their way over to the bar and let W buy them a drink and charm his way into their pants.

But this girl was surprising. She merely looked back at him for a few extra seconds, unusual, mesmerizing eyes locked onto his.

W looked a little uncertain now; his smile faltered for a tiny moment.

Then she smiled. Slow, simmering, sexy.

The scene was one that Jonas knew would stay in his mind for a long time. A beautiful man standing at the bar. A beautiful girl standing, stock-still, with her hand on her hip on the dance floor as bodies and music whirled and swayed around her. Her smile and sparkling eyes devilishly inviting. His smile widening as he cocked an eyebrow at her and raised his chin. _Hello, there_.

Jonas shivered a little. He could _feel_ the moment. It built in his chest, a knowing, a sudden foresight. This was something big. Something important.

This was a beginning.

* * *

**Hermione's cottage, the present**

Hermione had rushed away immediately after speaking to Little Red. She'd spared a minute to kiss Draco again and whisper "We'll talk later. We must," before nearly running out the door.

Draco leaned back against the wall and settled himself more comfortably on the white mattress that he was becoming strangely fond of and waited for later.

In the meantime, he occupied himself with what he did best- thinking.

Most of his thoughts centred on her. It didn't surprise him. Even when they'd been in Hogwarts together she'd been infuriatingly difficult to rid his mind of. And ever since he had started living here, she had begun to occupy his thoughts to a frightening extent.

Maybe she had even before that.

...

The first time he had bumped into her after the War had been at Hogwarts, the first Anniversary of the Final Battle. Father had not begun torturing him yet. He was only under-nourished because of the shortage of food in the house, but in much better shape than he would become only a month later when Father lost it completely.

He'd been under a strong Disillusionment Charm. He knew that most of the Wizarding World thought that he and Mother were currently hiding out in some obscure town in America. He knew that if he was seen it would cause a spectacle of horrendous magnitude. But he couldn't help himself; he felt so drawn to the place.

He'd been skulking in a corner of the Great Hall, watching everyone meet and smile and nod gravely at each other.

There had been important sounding speeches and important sounding dedications.

A monument had been unveiled, a statue of a Phoenix. It stood dead centre of the Great Hall, marking the point at which Potter and the Dark Lord's spells had met and left golden flames burning on that fateful day a year ago. It was beautiful. Made of some charmed stone that shone and glimmered in a riot of shades of red, orange and yellow. Around the base, the names of the fallen members of the Light had been inscribed.

Almost everybody who looked at it had welled up. Draco watched it all with a strange feeling of hollowness.

_Why do I feel nothing?_

Potter had been called up to make a speech. Even Draco had to admit that his speech had been moving, more so because it sounded so genuine. He'd spoken about healing and looking ahead, but without the annoying superciliousness that most of the other speakers had had.

And then everyone had dispersed. A huge crowd was partaking of the unbelievable buffet of food that had been set out along on whole wall of the Great Hall. Some were sitting around, wandering the grounds, chatting, catching up.

All Draco saw when he looked at everybody was everything he would never have.

The loneliness welled up inside him until he was suffocating on it. He needed to get out of there.

He'd started to walk blindly, out of the Great Hall, down some corridors, up some stairs, unseeing, reeling on how stupid he had been to come here.

He passed Zabini, Nott and Parkinson, standing in a corner and talking in hushed tones. Nott and Parkinson's parents had been put to death. Their crimes had been horrendous. Unpardonable. Their children had been allowed to live in their own homes and carry out relatively normal lives, but they'd been warned that if they set a single toe out of line, they would go the same way as their parents.

Zabini's mother had always kept herself away from the Dark Lord's regime somehow, so Zabini was still living with her. Draco didn't know how they'd had the balls to come today. And why hadn't they been lynched? Had the whole of the Wizarding World adopted the whole forgiveness-within-reason mindset that Potter'd been advocating? It seemed to be the only explanation.

Draco ran past them.

He kept on running until he arrived, gasping, at the Room that had been his haven and prison in equal parts in sixth year. The Room that Crabbe had destroyed with his Fiendfyre.

The Castle had been renovated after the Final Battle. And the Room of Requirement had, somehow even after all the abuse it had been put through, fixed itself.

Just then, it was a small, cozy sitting room with plush armchairs and carpeting in warm browns and beiges.

And it was raining on the occupants of the room.

Charmed, as it was, to react to the moods and whims of its occupants, it was reacting to their obvious emotional turmoil.

The door had been left open. Obviously the people inside had been too caught up in whatever to ask the Room to lock itself.

Draco watched.

"We broke up in _December_, Ron! Four months ago! I can't do this anymore. I just _can't_!"

_Granger._

She was standing in the middle of the room, her hair hanging down her back in drenched, dark brown curls. Her pretty, cotton dress clung to her skin. She was soaked.

So was Weasley, who was standing opposite her with the most angst-ridden expression Draco had ever seen on his face.

"But.. 'Mione. I _love_ you." He looked so torn up. Draco almost felt sorry for him.

"I love you, too. You know that. Why are you doing this to me?" Tears were welling up in her eyes, mixing with the rain as they fell on her cheeks. "We decided.. It was mutual. We're better off as friends. You said so yourself. Why-"

Weasley closed the distance between them in a single stride and gathered her up in his arms. He held her to him tightly, burying his face in her soaked through hair.

Something that felt like a huge hand was squeezing Draco's chest.

"I know, 'Mione. But I have never been happier than I was when we were together. I don't feel like that anymore."

She pushed him away. Violently, it seemed, from the way he stumbled back, shock flashing in his eyes.

"That's because what we had was comfortable. It was _easy_," she twisted the word like it was something distasteful. "Don't you understand? That's not what it's supposed to be like. There was no...spark. No fireworks. Tell me something, Ron," she went up to him and put her arms around his neck, pulling his face down to hers, "Why didn't we have break-up sex?"

He pulled back, staring at her like she'd gone crazy. "What?!"

"Break-up sex. Why didn't we have it? Why didn't we want one last soul-wrenching, scorching night together? Have we _ever_ had soul-wrenching, scorching _anything_?"

He didn't answer, still looking at her warily.

"Exactly," she said, her voice breaking on the word.

"Okay," he said, "Fine. We're over. Done."

"Okay."

The rain had stopped.

She turned to leave the room.

"Hey, 'Mione?"

She turned back to face him. "Yes?"

"I still love you. Always will."

She smiled. Sadly. "I know, Ron. I love you, too."

She walked out of the room, and suddenly her eyes widened.

Draco looked back at her and realized she could see him. He'd lost focus on the Disillusionment Charm. Fear froze him to the spot.

Irrationally, without thinking, he reached into his pocket, took out his handkerchief and handed it to her.

She took it and mopped her face, met his gaze again, and hurried away.

...

The second time that he'd bumped into her had been in Diagon Alley, on his birthday. He hadn't eaten in a week. He was in pain. And so hungry.

Mother had healed him, Transfigured his features for him and told him he had an hour to go out and get some fresh air, and eat something. She'd pressed a few Galleons that she'd pinched from Lucius and her wand into his hand, promised him that she was sure that Lucius was going to be busy for at least an hour and a half, and ordered him to go.

He'd Apparated immediately to Diagon Alley, his thoughts only on getting some food into his stomach. And who should he run into but Granger and Lovegood, sitting at a little cafe and chatting.

He'd walked past them quickly, not even looking in their direction. And then he'd heard Lovegood's airy voice, "Hello, Draco!"

"Luna, what are you saying?" Granger had hissed.

"That's Draco Malfoy," Lovegood had said firmly. "Come join us, Draco."

Petrified that she'd say his name one more time, he'd turned and gone up to their table.

"Sit," Luna had said, "we won't tell anybody. We promise. Don't we, Hermione?"

Granger had nodded dumbly, her eyes wide with shock.

So he had sat and eaten lunch with Granger and Lovegood. Lovegood had chattered away gaily about nothing in particular while Granger struggled to pretend that this was just a normal lunch.

It was the strangest afternoon he had experienced in a while, and one of the best.

They'd gotten up to leave just as he finished eating his huge meal.

He remembered looking up at them with a pleading expression, his mouth too full to say what he needed to.

_Please don't tell._

"We won't," Granger had whispered. She dropped a few Galleons on the table. Enough to cover his meal as well. And then they'd Disapparated.

...

After he had come to live with her in this little cottage, he found himself being slowly consumed by her.

Her scent, a delicious mix of citrus and berry that permeated the entire house.

It was what made him kiss her the first time.

They had gone to dinner at Potter's that night. It became a confrontational evening.

He had only gone because Potter had insisted, saying that if he was going to be a part of Hermione's life for however long, they might as well get on with getting to know him properly.

They'd been sitting at the ornate Dining Table while Potter's House-Elf served dinner. He'd laughed out loud at this; Potter had a House-Elf. Who'd have thought it.

Hermione sat beside him, Weasley on the other side of her, Neville and his wife whose name he never caught across from them, Luna on Neville's other side, and Potter and Little Red across from each other beside Weasley and Luna respectively at the other end of the table.

Weasley in particular was not handling his presence well. Potter and Little Red kept trying to smooth things over, but nothing doing.

And then he made a mistake.

They were talking about Hogwarts, something about Binns, and there was laughter around the table, genuine and uninhibited, for the first time all evening.

Without thinking he'd said, laughing through his words, "We used to imagine what he would look like having sex with different girls. There was one in particular that kept us in stitches for hours. You remember that round, short, little Third Year Hufflepuff girl when we were in Fourth Year?"

There were titters around the table, but nobody could remember the girl's name.

"I can't remember her name," he'd said frustratedly, it was right on the tip of his tongue, "you know who I'm talking about, don't you? Pigtails. Mudblood, I think-"

He'd stopped short.

The silence in the room was deafening.

And then the crystal wine goblet he'd been holding shattered, right out of his hand. He'd jumped up in surprise, and then he saw Potter.

Potter was still sitting, but the air around him had changed. It was shimmering, sparking with magical energy.

Every eye in the room was riveted on it. Potter didn't move, and his suddenly eerily glowing eyes were focused on Draco. The power emanating from him was like a living thing in and of itself. It lashed out from his body and crackled angrily.

_Woah._

"I'm sorry," Draco said loudly, "I didn't think."

Little Red whispered something to Potter, and slowly the energy dissipated. Potter stood up a little shakily.

Weasley stood with him, his fists clenched, "I think you should leave, Malfoy."

Draco bristled, but controlled himself.

"Okay, I'm going. I apologize again."

Potter looked at him, his expression peaceful again, "Apology accepted."

Hermione stood up.

Weasley balked. "Why are _you_ leaving?"

Hermione looked at him calmly. "My cottage is spelled to only open for me."

They'd Disapparated back to the cottage.

Draco'd turned to her as soon as they'd shut the door behind them. "You didn't have to do that."

"I know," she said simply, her eyes filled with a strange emotion.

"Why did you?"

"Because I knew you didn't mean to. So many years of believing something. You're going to slip up sometimes."

"I'm sorry. I don't believe those things anymore."

She sat down on the couch, regarding him seriously with those sparkling, brown eyes of hers.

"What _do_ you believe, Draco?"

He sat down on the other end of the couch. "I..I don't know."

"Do you truly believe that I can help you do whatever it is you came here to do?"

"Take revenge on Lucius. Stop him. Yes, I believe you can."

"Then why won't you tell me what he's doing? Why he did those things to you?"

He'd frowned then, trying to clear some of the Firewhisky and Wine-produced fuzziness from his head. "I don't know exactly what he's doing. I don't know why he tortured me. But I know I need to stop him. I need to kill him."

She smiled. He found it suddenly hard to breathe.

She scooted until she was sitting right beside him. Close enough for her intoxicating scent to fill his nostrils.

"I'll tell you what I believe," she'd whispered.

"What?" he asked, trying to ignore how beautiful she was with her curls framing her face and her button nose.

"You."

That was when he'd kissed her.

...

The second time they'd kissed was more than a month later.

Little Red had decided that they all needed to go out dancing. She had insisted that Draco go, too.

So they'd all gone to a Muggle nightclub.

Hermione had looked drop dead gorgeous that night. Little Red had dressed her up. Black jeans that hugged her legs, a blood red halter top made of some insanely sexy silky material, and she'd put her hair up with a jewelled clip, leaving a few curls to hang around her face.

They'd all done a few shots and danced. Weasley had found a pretty girl at the bar to dance with. Potter and Little Red were being their romantic selves in a dark corner of the room.

The music was loud. Deafening. It thumped right through Draco's bones.

He sat at the bar and sipped his drink, taking it all in, watching Hermione dance and trying to control his heart rate.

A pretty blonde sat next to him at the bar. She smiled at him brightly. "Hi!"

Draco smiled uncertainly.

And then Hermione was tugging on his hand. "Come and dance!" she yelled over the music, stumbling slightly on her ridiculously high heels as she pulled him in the direction of the dancefloor.

He let her drag him away.

The dance floor was just a mass of moving bodies. Hermione squeezed herself through them and pulled him close to her.

He put his hands on her hips and began to sway in time to the beat.

_Control yourself. You're just dancing. Just. Dancing._

They Just Danced for what felt like hours. He revelled in the feel of her, the way every time she brushed against him, every time she looked up at him and smiled, sparks of electricity climbed his skin and made things tighten in all the right places.

Intoxicated by the music and her, he'd pulled her into him when the music segued into something heavy and slow, holding her close, running his nose along the side of her neck. His fingers found and languidly stroked the soft skin of her lower back where her top just failed to meet the waistband of her jeans.

"Mmm," she'd sighed contentedly.

_You're beautiful. You're everything that I want. _

The words didn't come.

What did he have to offer her? Pain. Heartache. Evil.

And he could not afford to be distracted; he had a mission, a monster to kill.

And then she'd looked up at him, dark caramel eyes glimmering in the pulsing lights, looking right into him, right through him. Looking like they liked what they were seeing.

Before he knew it, his lips were on hers, his hands in her hair, and she was melting into him.

"GAH!"

He pulled away from her with a frustrated groan.

Weasely was standing a few inches away, his pretty girl nowhere to be found. He looked like he'd just been Confunded.

"'Mione, what the _fuck_ are you doing?"

He walked up to her and gripped her arm.

Draco had the sudden need to breathe very slowly through his nose as his eyes riveted themselves onto Weasley's hand on her arm.

Little Red and Potter were there now. "Ron, let her go. Come on," his sister urged.

Weasley ignored her, still glaring at Hermione. He narrowed his eyes.

"So was that scorching? _Soul-wrenching_?"

Draco saw her reel, hurt flashing in her eyes when Weasley twisted her words and threw them back in her face.

She pulled her arm out of his hand sharply.

"Mate, stop it. Let's go," Potter was saying.

"No, Harry, wait." Hermione said, taking a deep breath. She straightened her spine, squared her shoulders and turned to Weasley.

"Ron, we are broken up. I am an extremely intelligent individual, capable of making my own decisions without your coddling. Don't pretend like you haven't moved on, several times over, several times a week."

Weasley's eyes widened.

"Yeah," Hermione went on, "Exactly. I know what I'm doing. As my friend, you have every right to tell me your opinions, voice your concerns. But what I choose to do about those concerns is my choice. So back the fuck off."

_So insanely sexy._

Little Red was smiling at Draco so suggestively he was suddenly sure she knew what he was thinking.

Weasley was deflating slowly.

He put his hands up and shrugged.

Hermione nodded. "Now that that's straightened out," she'd grabbed Draco's hand and Disapparated back to the cottage.

Draco was uncomfortable. "Why do you keep doing that?"

She stumbled a little, obviously still inebriated. "Doing what?"

"Choosing me."

An unnamed emotion began to glow warmly in her eyes.

"Not used to that, are you?" she asked softly.

"No."

There was silence for a few minutes.

She kicked off her heels and sank onto the couch in that curious half-kneel.

"I don't understand my behaviour when it comes to you," she admitted, frowning in confusion.

"I mean, I know all the reasons why I shouldn't trust you. I know what you are; at least I think I have a pretty good idea. But then I think, maybe that's not what you are, but what you used to be. And if you're not all those things that I think I know, anymore, then who are you now?"

He chuckled in spite of his utter mystification. "Drunkard."

She grinned, blinking slowly.

He sat down next to her with a deep sigh.

"Did you have fun tonight?" she queried.

He turned his head to look at her, and was caught off guard again by her loveliness.

"What?" she asked.

"You're beautiful." There. He'd said it.

She just looked at him.

He'd gone too far. Crossed some unsaid boundary. She was probably going to throw him out of her house now. He wanted to hit himself.

Then she got onto her knees, which brought her face up to the height of his, and leaned close. Wonderfully close.

Just before she pressed her mouth to his, she whispered, "Well, so are you."

The next half hour passed in a delirious haze.

At one point he realized he was lying down on top of her, pressing her into the cushioning of the couch.

His hand found the knot of the halter at the nape of her neck, fiddled with it, it came undone obligingly. Her skin was hot under his hands. She shivered a little. He found that unbelievably arousing for some reason.

Her hands were running up and down his spine, while he slid his tongue into her mouth and tasted her.

Delicious.

He kissed her neck and her sharp little whine when he found some special point under her ear shot straight to his groin.

His shirt was on the floor; her hands were on the planes of his chest, running over his stomach.

He reached around her, playing with the clasp of her strapless bra as he claimed her lips with his, looking her dead in the eyes, drowning in the heated, chocolatey depths, when she pushed him away lightly.

He stopped instantly and sat up, trying to control his breathing, not even thinking about trying to hide his erection. She'd definitely already felt it against her hip anyway.

She picked up her top and stood up shakily, her extremely distracting chest rising and falling erratically.

"We should get some sleep."

"Yeah," he agreed easily, standing up as well.

She'd hurried into her room before he could say another word. He didn't know what he would have said anyway.

But he did know that now that he had tasted this much of her, it wouldn't be long before he would start craving it again.

Wry thoughts of addiction and getting his next 'fix' had flitted in and out of his mind as he drifted off to sleep.

...

The front door slammed, jolting Draco out of his reverie.

She was home.

He stood up, cracking his knuckles and stretching. He'd been sitting motionless on that mattress for over an hour.

He went into the Living Room. She was shrugging out of her coat. He caught a glimpse of her face before she turned away.

Something was wrong.

_Gods, no._

Irrational, debilitating fear swirled into his stomach and began to bubble like acid.

Why wouldn't she look at him?

The evil voice in his head woke up and began to hum softly, menacingly.

"What is it?" he asked, sounding sharper than he intended, "What's wrong?"

She didn't answer, showing her back to him while she took an unnecessary amount of time hanging up her coat and taking off her shoes.

He walked up to her, put his hands on her shoulders, crowding her.

"Hermione..."

"Let go of me!"

She wrenched herself away, crossing the room, putting distance between them.

He didn't understand.

_Evil gets what it deserves. You always knew she was too good for you, Draco. Make her pay for making you believe you're better than what you are. Make her scream._

"Why should I tell you what happened?" she demanded.

He didn't answer, struggling to block out the hissing in his head, to make sense of what was happening.

"_You're broken but I will fix you_," she mocked herself. "I'm so stupid! How can I fix you when you don't want to be fixed?"

"What do you _want_ from me?" he said, suddenly so tired, "I have tried every way possible to let you in. I want you to help me. I need you. But it's never enough for you. _I let you into my fucking mind_. Do you have any idea how difficult that is for me?"

"I don't know how to make sense of your mind," she said sadly, "it's too fractured. What Lucius did to you...it fucked you up too much."

_Told you so_.

The hissing voice had been right. He'd been a fool. He was beyond repair. He had known that. But he'd allowed himself to hope, to trust that she would somehow find a way to fix him, to help him. Now she'd finally admitted it. Even she couldn't help him. No matter how hard he tried to change, he would never escape his past.

"Okay," he said, nodding, sounding a hundred times surer than he felt, sounding together when he was actually shattering. "I'll leave."

He'd survive somehow. Find a way to make some money. Find a way to kill Lucius himself. Or die trying.

Her eyes widened like she'd been slapped.

"Wh-What?"

"I'll leave. I understand."

"No!" she looked terrified by the prospect of his leaving. A tiny bubble of hope built in his chest.

"That's not what I want! I want to help you, Draco. But I need to you to be strong enough to just tell me everything. Talk. No Leglimency. No forcing it out of you. If you expect me to trust you, to believe you, you need to be able to open up to me."

_Going to tell her everything, are we? Tell her, how black your heart really is. Go on._

He took a deep breath.

She was right. Of course she was.

But saying it meant reliving it. Talking about it meant accepting that it had actually happened to him.

"Fine," he said, closing his eyes. "I'll tell you everything."

They sat down across from each other at the little dining table in the space adjoining the kitchen.

She looked at him expectantly, waiting.

He began.

"About a month after the day you saw me at Hogwarts..You remember?"

She nodded.

"Yeah, so about a month after that day, something changed about Lucius. He started to ramble, to talk to Voldemort like he was actually there, and to hit my mother. We knew what was happening. He was losing it. But we didn't understand why? And why then? What had caused it?"

He closed his eyes; it would make it easier to get it all out.

"I was already quite weak by then. I wasn't eating enough. The Ministry had only made arrangements for just enough money to buy food and things to support one person. Nobody knew that mother and I were still living there. We tried to ignore his descent into madness. Tried to make the best of it. And then one day I walked in on him...hurting mother."

He heard his voice break slightly, but kept going.

"He'd chained her arms to the wall and he was burning her with the tip of his wand. Again and again. Kept rambling about how she was the reason for his fall from grace. She didn't cry, or scream, just closed her eyes and took it. She was as starved as I was. He barely fed us. But I couldn't control myself anymore. I attacked him."

"He overpowered me easily, took away my wand. Said from now on he was going to teach me how to 'respect'. Said it would make me strong, make me less of a maggot. He imprisoned me in my room. Gave me a few crusts of bread and some water every few days. And...and he would come in every morning and afternoon for 'lessons'."

Draco opened his eyes and saw the horror stark on her face.

He continued.

"He was very imaginative with his torture. He'd try out new curses on me, made up some of his own even. I would black out from all the blood loss and he would revive me, only to hurt me again."

It was getting difficult to speak now. Draco swallowed heavily.

"Every day. Every fucking day. For months and months. I realized something then. The human body can get used to anything. Even pain. I learned to shut my mind off, to pretend it was somebody else who was getting his skin sliced off and his bones broken one by one.

I used to tell myself that at least if he was torturing me, he left mother alone. That was something to be thankful for. She would come in every evening and heal me, try and make me comfortable. She tried so hard.

He realized that I'd found a way to deal with his 'lessons'. He didn't like that. So he came up with something new. He Imperio'd me. Ordered me to _feel_. Every cut, every blow, every drop of sweat that he turned to acid on my skin. Sometimes he made me hurt myself. Sectumsempra. Diffindo. And he'd laugh. 'It's just a few scratches. Stop whimpering, maggot. Weakling.'"

Tears were running freely down her cheeks now. He didn't look at her for too long, struggling to keep himself together. He needed to finish this.

"And then one day, I heard voices. Men and women. So many of them. I was lying in my own blood, trying to breathe through a broken nose, and I started to laugh. 'They've come to stop him,' I thought. 'The Ministry's finally decided to come.' And then the door to my room opened, and Lucius was standing there. He'd cleaned himself up, put on new robes. There was a crowd of people behind him, all in cloaks with hoods that covered their faces. They weren't Death Eaters though. Nothing even close to as tame.

They were sickos. Violence-junkies. Some liked to watch, some liked to actually hurt. They were all willing to pay big money for an hour a day to put some wounds in a Pureblood, ex-Death Eater. To watch him scream. I preferred them to him, though. They weren't nearly as creative with their spells. I could go back to cutting myself off, blanking it all out. He got rich, on my pain, on my bloodshed. He made _money_ off of it."

He hadn't realized that he had wrapped his arms around himself and hunched over until then. He was whispering now, barely able to get the words out.

"I have this voice in my head. Every time I hear it I feel sick to my stomach. I have considered ramming my head against a wall until I black out, just to get rid of it. It is evil. Pure, undiluted. I think it's me. A part of me. A part that I will never escape."

Hermione stood up then, and walked around the table until she was standing in front of him. Tears were still dripping down her cheeks, but her voice was firm, "You will."

He looked up at her, opened his mouth to speak, but there were no words for this.

"You _will_," she repeated, kneeling and looking him dead in the eyes.

And then he remembered something. Her expression when she had walked in to the house.

"What happened? With Little Red, why were you so upset?"

Worry flooded her features. As if in harmony, some dark premonition coiled tightly in his stomach.

"It's Harry."

She told him everything that Little Red had told her. The silver snake, its eyes, Potter's behaviour.

The foreboding began to coil tighter and tighter. Adrenaline jolted through his bloodstream.

He was already striding towards the front door by the time she'd finished talking.

"What are you doing? Draco! Where are you going?"

He wrenched open her door, the dark instinct pressing him on, warning not to waste a single minute.

He put everything he had to say into as few words as possible.

"I think I know what that thing is. You get Little Red and keep her here with you. Get Weasley, too. Stay safe. Stay alert. Something's coming. Something bad."

"Okay," she said, nodding. "But where are you going?"

He regarded her grimly, "To Potter's."

* * *

Zebrahead - Falling Apart lyrics:

Stutter step through another trap set by deception  
Mention rejection  
Always lies in your eyes  
Settles in your action  
lies in your eyes  
Settles in your action  
Jeopardize everything that I want  
And I won't compromise anything anymore  
In any way victimize myself any more  
Liberty (YEAH)

_[Chorus:]_  
Manipulations on my mind  
Expectations well defined  
Frustrate me  
Liberate me  
Cause everything's falling apart  
You can't control me, You can't control me  
Everything's falling apart  
Now I can't see you  
Doesn't matter what I do  
I can't see you  
Cause everything's falling apart

I got exposed to a deeper form of infection  
Shout out "I need acception"  
Always lies in your eyes  
Settles in your action  
lies in your eyes  
Settles in your action  
Criticize everything that I do  
And I will overcome anything that's in store  
Nevermore look up to you and adore  
Liberty (YEAH)

_[Chorus]_

Manipulation on my mind  
Inspect me - try to check me  
Expectations well defined  
Dissect me - want to wreck me  
Violator of my own will  
Accept me - reject me  
Separate or shoot to kill


End file.
